Ben de Hoedt is a Melbourne-based singer/songwriter, musician and documentary film maker. de Hoedt’s forthcoming album City Lights Shimmer is informed by undercover police drams like Miami Vice, Deep Cover and others while thematically exploring dissonance, duality and paranoia.

Fittingly, the album was conceived as the soundtrack to an imagined undercover detective film — heavy on atmospheric and textures, with songs serving as set-pieces and vocals as incantations. The album is structured like two sides of an LP while still feeling connected and of a piece.

City Lights Shimmer‘s latest single, “Divided Souls” is a brooding and atmospheric bit of 80s-inspired synth pop centered around glistening synth arpeggios, throbbing percussion, a slow-burning yet fiery guitar solo and enormous hooks paired with de Hoedt’s yearning delivery. Sonically, the song seems to evoke the sort of scene that’s seemingly in every undercover detective movie and show: a rainy, foggy night in which our lost and broken detective’s personal and professional lives are about to violently explode.

The accompanying video is based in carefully and slickly edited footage from Miami Vice, which manages to emphasizes the song’s aesthetic and lyrics.