With Attention, her second album, that world feels bigger, sharper and more self-assured than ever. Where 2019’s Vanta Black often sat with heartbreak, its follow-up is more restless and seductive, full of lust, ego, movement and the peculiar feeling of being watched while also wanting to be seen. Hoagg has extended that world through a seemingly endless run of videos too, from vampires wandering the Lower East Side to BMWs, ferries and LA traffic.

When we caught up with her, Attention had been out long enough for Hoagg to see which songs were finding their people, sometimes in ways she hadn’t expected. We talked about making videos with zero dollars and a dream, her obsession with visual culture, what makes a perfect music video, working alongside Fever Ray on The Bride!, her definition of a pop star and why whatever comes after Attention probably won’t stay in one place for very long.

Rare DM by David Rauch-Bautista (@drbmemory)

HighClouds: Attention has now been out for three months now. How have you felt about the audience’s reaction to it? Has anything about the audience’s reaction surprised you?

I was thrilled with how many people listened to it when it dropped. I got a lot of unexpected messages praising the album, and I was really touched by that!

It has been surprising to see which songs people have been most excited about and resonate with most.

Looking back after the album’s release, is there a song that listeners connected with differently than you expected?

The video for “Honey” really took off, and the song did too. It seems like people really connected with the serious lyrics and loved the contrast of the (rather unserious) vampire VHS video. I had so much fun reading the comments on YouTube and was pleasantly surprised the song was so loved because it’s very different from most of the album. Also “Butterfly Historian” seems like it’s becoming a favorite for people, which is interesting.

Were there any songs that almost didn’t make the final tracklist for Attention but now feel essential? Is there any song you wish you had put on?

“Significant Other” was the final song mixed. Attention wouldn’t be the same without it! That instrumental rips and it’s one of my favorite tracks on my album. I am happy with the number of tracks in the final, so I feel pretty good, I don’t wish another track had made it. I wish I had more songs already mixed/mastered for upcoming things though!

When people discover Rare DM today, do you hope they begin with Attention, or do you think Vanta Black is a better introduction?

I’d rather them listen to Attention, but I think “send nudes” is a great introduction actually. The song/video are very close to my heart and was the track between the two albums that tied them together.

You have mentioned your desire to merge the audio with the visual. When you begin a new project, do you imagine images first, sounds first, or do they develop together?

Usually song first, but often I have a visual in mind while I am finishing things, or am inspired by things while I am writing that naturally end up in the video. I always knew I wanted to shoot “LA Traffic” in LA, and “send nudes” was alway a bike song.

So far, I have counted 7 music videos from Attention. Do you plan to release one for each track? How do you decide which track gets an album and how do you create the stories for them?

I would love to finish the other 6! I think that’s a great idea. I’ll circle back on that 😉

The songs that become the “singles” usually get videos. Ideally always. That’s best practice for giving a song the best stage possible to find new listeners, and hope that people care. As far as the videos go, when I am blessed with working with Lisa Saeboe and Jake Moore, (“Rolex”, “Compliment”) they have a whole creative direction and shot list in mind from the get-go. With the videos I have dreamed up, I usually have a loose idea of what I want to do, and/or I improvise. For example, I wanted to bike with a go-pro for the “send nudes” video, so I could film it myself during peak covid March 2020. Jordan Fuller who co-directed (and made the fancy steadicam footage possible with Keith Ferreira) let me borrow his. Then naturally I knew I wanted a 1987 BMW 325 for the 325 music video, and found out Keith literally had one, and was down to clown.

For “Honey” I didn’t know what I wanted to do other then run around the LES with a VHS, Calvin Stark and Gianna Dallman – then I found my tailcoat / vampire cape and thought that would be fun. For “Mean Girled” I always knew I wanted to do a video on the ferry, and that one worked out perfectly. Shooting “LA Traffic” was a bit more planned out – my buddy Mallen directed, and we fully locked down locations as well as styling with Shaina Rose, and had a lil plot for it.

I guess it all depends on the video and the size of the team! “The Ring” was another $0 video that was a VHS, Calvin and a dream. Just drove my Dad’s cool Vanagon Carat around, and ran around in the woods in a suit. It is spooky and I had a bunch of fun editing that one too.

Rare DM by David Rauch-Bautista (@drbmemory)

Has there ever been a moment where the visuals changed your understanding of a track?

Everytime I shoot a video for a track I get better at performing that song live and have a new experience with it. I remember intricate details in the song that I maybe forgot about, and I learn the song all over again in a new way, especially when editing the video myself. You spend soooo much time with it, it’s only natural.

Is there a medium you haven’t explored yet that you’d like to incorporate into the Rare DM project in the future?

I would like to design my own stage clothes someday, and have some proper dance routines live.

Are there any particular visual artists or filmmakers who inspire you?

Some visual artists: Rothko, Eadweard Muybridge, Man Ray, Hilma af Klint, René Gruau, Kathleen F. Hoagg (Mom), Douglas Hoagg (Dad).

Some filmmakers: Satoshi Kon, Joon Ho, Guillermo del Toro, Ridley Scott, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki.

As someone who pays close attention to visual composition, are there album covers or music videos that you consider perfect works of art?

Perfect!? That’s a very serious word!! Daft Punk‘s Interstella 5555 is perfect though. The Knife‘s Pass This On is perfect also. I don’t know who else I should say perfect about. I will say I love the music video for “Locket” by Crumb, Metronomy‘s “She Wants” & “Aquarius” (Metronomy has great videos in general), Ladytron‘s “Seventeen” is a classic also. Justice‘s “Stress” is a favorite. Chromeo – “Night by Night” for sure. The 2012 video “Time to Dance” by The Shoes is awesome – FKA Twigs is a featured dancer in it before she dropped “Two Weeks” and Jake Gyllenhaal is a hipster serial killer. It’s fun. They are all inventive and I’m nostalgic about them. What else? There are so many! I am for sure forgetting some favs!!

Regarding album covers… Interpol‘s Turn On The Bright Lights, Weyes Blood‘s Titanic Rising is incredible. Grace Jones‘ Island Life & Nightclubbing . I love the cover of Lady Gaga‘s Mayhem. The Beatles have a bunch of great ones too.

What draws you to the contrast between glamour and darkness rather than embracing one extreme or the other?

Why limit myself! Both are beautiful. They contrast each other, as you said, which is an interesting place to explore. I don’t want to confine myself to a single aesthetic.

What do you think people are searching for when they’re drawn to your music and videos?

Oh I really don’t know. I would expect it’s the sound palette that I am drawn to and that they like the sonic quality of my voice. Alternatively, lyric people (IMO listeners are usually music people or lyric people) can also perhaps find solace in my words because they relate to them. For my videos – I’d like to think they are all either beautiful, exciting, entertaining, or clever… ideally some combo of all of the above. That is what I strive for.

You have said you both want to be a pop star and view yourself as one. What exactly does being a pop star mean to you? Is there something in particular you want to achieve in order to meet that goal?

I believe in manifestation and achieving my dreams. Be the person you want to be, so I am a star. Being a Pop Star is being the truest version of yourself and owning every aspect of your career, and being an icon. It’s different for everyone I think though. David Bowie is a Pop Star. So is Elvis, Edith Piaf, Pink Pantheress, Julian Casablancas, Daft Punk, Doja Cat, Beyoncé, etc etc. I don’t want to delve into every dream ever here, but some dreams of mine: write a legendary song that people want to sing at karaoke forever, be be someones favorite artist, create someone’s favorite album of all time, perform at the major festivals and beyond, act in movies, play all the best late night TV shows, attend the Met Gala, grace the cover of legendary magazines, perform at the Grammy’s and VH1 music video awards…. so many more! I want to be able to live well off of my art forever, doing what I love most.

Rare DM by David Rauch-Bautista (@drbmemory)

Has performing in The Bride! influenced the way you think about performing your own songs on stage or in videos?

The attention to detail / the super tight ship that was run (on such a large scale too!) solidified opinions I already had about what I want to do on stage and in videos.

Meeting Karin (Fever Ray) and having the privilege of seeing them work their magic was a highlight as well. I loved the experience and hope to act again asap. It made me want to wear even more suits also.

Have you ever considered composing an original score for a feature film or video game rather than adapting Rare DM songs?

I already scored a short film – Night of The Tilberi which I loved doing. I absolutely want to write more scores.

In the future, what do you hope people will say about Attention?

That it is “timeless”… I’d like the album to be acclaimed enough that it becomes a classic loved album of the 2020’s, and hope it ages well, like Turn on The Bright Lights did for me. In the short term I hope it gets reviewed on even more publications, warrants some words from Pitchfork (big dream tbqh!), and makes some 2026 years end lists.

Have you thought ahead to your next chapter after Attention? Do you think it will move in a new direction or continue along the same path?

Never stay stagnant! I will exit any confines of genre. TBD

What plans do you have for the future with regard to releasing new music or videos and touring?

I want to perform in South America, Asia, and Austrailla for the first time asap. Definitely tour more in general! I will have new videos and music soon!

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Thanks so much for the lovely thoughtful interview HighClouds! For any new listeners / readers, I hope to see you at a show someday and I would so thankful if you’d share my music with a friend. <3 The best way to stay up to date is my Instagram.

Catch Rare DM headlining the first night of Purple City Festival this Friday, September 11 in Edmonton, Canada.

Made once again in close collaboration with her TOPS bandmate David Carriere, the album moves freely between pop, glam rock, country and early-2000s nostalgia, while holding onto the mix of humour and emotional sincerity that made her debut so charming. Across twelve tracks, Cikojevic turns bad nights, old memories, heartbreak and Hollywood mythology into a world populated by chaotic princesses, angels, demons, telepathic lovers, Baywatch Barbies and, of course, the mysterious woman who gave the album its name. She is also celebrating the release with a deliciously decadent new video for “Chaotic Princess,” one of the record’s most gloriously over-the-top moments.

The title of the album comes from a real encounter Cikojevic had after moving from Montreal to Los Angeles in 2024. But as she explains below, Mask Lady and Late Night Girl eventually became about something much broader: the different versions of ourselves we show to the world, the ones we keep hidden, and all the contradictions in between.

A few days before the album’s release, we caught up with Marci to talk about its strange Hollywood origin story, flexing her vocal muscles, cheesy lyrics, cinema, dive bars, dream collaborations and the perfect soundtrack for a chaotic night out.

“The masks give us super powers but also give us something to hide behind.”

HighClouds: Your new album title comes from this woman you used to see around your neighborhood in LA, who you called “Mask Lady,” while she apparently knew you as “Late Night Girl.” Can you tell us a bit more about that encounter?

Marci: After I moved to Hollywood/Franklin Village at the beginning of 2024, I would see this sassy and sexy dressed iconic woman walking around with her mini purse and pin-up girl Halloween mask. I was dying to talk to her.

Finally, one night I was coming home from a party and worked up the courage to stop her and chat. I said, “Omg you’re Mask Lady! I think you’re so iconic, I love your look,” and she responded, “Oh hey, you’re Late Night Girl.”

To my surprise, I was also a character of the neighbourhood to her. I felt honoured.

Marci by Alex Joukouv

The title comes from that very specific encounter, but it also seems to sum up the whole mood of the record. How would you explain the concept of Mask Lady and Late Night Girl and what connects these songs together for you?

To me, these songs touch on duality: the past and the present, who I was and who I want to be, darkness and light.

The cover shows two people, wearing something that is covering their face, driving on. The masks give us superpowers but also give us something to hide behind.

On the cover and on the record, Late Night Girl is in the passenger seat, looking through the window and watching life go by, with the help of Mask Lady weaving through the traffic and getting us where we need to go.

There are so many larger-than-life images across the record: princesses, angels and demons, sci-fi, astrology, Baywatch, Miami Vice, Babylon. Do you naturally process your own experiences by turning them into something more theatrical or cinematic?

I love this question because it combines all the most epic words on the album haha.

I love drama and grandeur in art and storytelling. I think I enjoy making things a little more fantastical. I don’t think I process my experiences like that, but I probably make them sound way cooler than they are later lol.

Since you mention that love of drama and grandeur, who are some of your favourite directors?

I’m going to pick some new ones I’m excited about: Matt Johnson, Julia Ducournau, John Early, Joachim Trier, Jordan Peele, Robert Eggers and Denis Villeneuve.

Some all-time favs: Sofia Coppola, Martin Scorsese, M. Night Shyamalan, Kubrick, The Wachowskis because The Matrix is literally the best. Steven Spielberg is so nostalgic for me. Wong Kar Wai was a first love.

What are your favourite lyrics on the album, and what makes them special to you?

I love the lyrics of “Lady with the Mask” because it felt like I was really there when I wrote them. Like I could feel the fear and sweat and danger and had imagined a whole scene.

But I also really love the lyrics of “Chaotic Princess” because they were so funny to write and immerse myself in, bratty style.

Marci by Allison Goldfarb

“She’s a little bit country, she’s a little bit rock and roll.”

You’ve said you wanted to try things on this album that you didn’t get to explore on Marci, what did you consciously want to push further this time around?

I wanted to try using my voice differently and push myself vocally. I also wanted to add more distorted guitars and write in other genres because she’s a little bit country, she’s a little bit rock and roll.

Which song on Mask Lady and Late Night Girl was the most challenging to make?

The ones that didn’t make the album 😂 Maybe they will make the next one 😉

You haven’t had a duet or featured guest on a Marci song yet. If you could pick anyone for a dream collaboration, who would it be?

I think it would be really cool to make a song with Nourished by Time.

Okay, also Spielberg was mentioned earlier and now I have so many John Williams themes running through my head. Wouldn’t that be the coolest, to make something huge and epic with John Williams?! Haha woooah.

When you’re making music, do you trust spontaneity or perfection more?

A balance of both!!

“Really cheesy lyrics are the best bad decision.”

What is your favourite bad decision in a pop song?

Literally when I say “where my heart used to be” in my own song “Butterfly Sticker”… It took me a minute to move forward with that line 😂.

So I guess really cheesy lyrics are the best bad decision.

When you and David are making a Marci song, how often are you actually talking about references? Are you saying “this should feel like Janet Jackson” or “this needs to sound like 2002,” or is that musical vocabulary more instinctive between you by now?

We do reference stuff, but we pick production aspects of certain songs that we like, and not the whole aesthetic. We like to mix different styles.

You’re both members of TOPS and you also work very closely with David on the Marci records. When you’re writing together, how do you know whether an idea belongs to TOPS or to Marci?

It’s usually pretty straightforward. If we’re working on Marci stuff, it’s Marci time, and if we’re jamming TOPS stuff, it’s with TOPS.

How do you manage those different creative processes in practice? Do you consciously switch into “Marci mode” when you start working on your solo music, or is the separation between the projects more fluid than that?

Definitely pretty fluid. I just love playing music and being creative as much as possible.

The main switch, I suppose, is when it’s Marci time I get to sing and work on flexing those muscles. So fun.

Marci by Justin Aranha

You moved from Montreal to Los Angeles between the two Marci albums. What feels most different about living and making music in those two cities? Do you think LA has changed the way you write or the kind of music you want to make?

LA is a workhorse in the way that there are constantly people working on music, and it rubs off on you in a good and bad way. It’s motivating but can make you feel overwhelmed.

Montreal feels a little more relaxed, but if you just chill out, LA can also be relaxed. I just got my own little studio space finally, so I’m chillin.

What does your ideal night out actually look like? Are you more into house parties, hanging out at a bar, dancing in a club, or something completely different?

Honestly, wherever the night takes me. But I do love a dive bar.

If you had to make the ultimate Marci party playlist, what are the first five songs going on it and why? And what would be the one song for the ride home at the end of the night?

Okay, we’re going to go in order of the night and you can make your own interpretations based on the song and title:

“Chaotic Princess” – Marci
“Lets Fucking Go Tonight” – Fireball Kid
“Lose Control” – Missy Elliott ft. Ciara
“It Feels So Good” – Sonique
“Memories” – David Guetta ft. Kid Cudi

And we’re saying goodbye with “Say Hello” by April Wine… cuz jk we coming back.

What are you obsessed with at the moment, outside of music?

Croatian cooking and my dog Pepa, always.

With Mask Lady and Late Night Girl, Marci takes everything that made her debut so easy to love and lets it get a little weirder. The synth-pop sparkle remains, but distorted guitars, pedal steel and glam-rock excess now sit comfortably alongside it, while songs like “Butterfly Sticker,” “Chaotic Princess,” “99 Dimensional” and “Lady with the Mask” reveal just how much room there is inside her pop universe.

More importantly, the album never forces its contradictions to resolve. Late Night Girl can keep the party going while Mask Lady quietly takes the wheel. A lyric can be ridiculously cheesy and completely sincere. A chaotic night can become funny in retrospect and still leave a bruise. Somewhere between those extremes, Marci has made a second record that feels unmistakably hers.

Mask Lady and Late Night Girl is out now.

Though separated by nearly 3,000 kilometers (Jeff Louis is based in Austin and Leanne Macomber in Philadelphia), their creative connection remains undeniable. Across that distance, the pair maintain their gauzy synth textures, drum machine pulse, and intimate emotional tone.

The duo formed in 2007 when Macomber (also of Young Ejecta and Wet Eggs) was seeking a new direction for her lyrics and found a collaborator in Louis, whose arrangements help define their sound.

After a 14-year hiatus, Fight Bite returned with their new release, Party!, on 21 April 2026. During that time, Macomber relocated and worked with her other projects, but the duo continued exchanging music remotely.

“We’re not so much a band about evolution as we are about continuing to see how we connect and where we meet. Like a very innate childhood connection, it just sort of lives forever and grows.” – Leanne Macomber

Macomber has described the break as necessary, saying, “we really wanted to distill the best of both of our efforts.” The album was built through email exchanges. Sometimes Louis would send musical sketches for Macomber to add lyrics to, and other times she sent full demos for him to reshape. She calls it a “double blind process,” resulting in a record that balances dreamlike nostalgia with fresh, subtle experimentation.

The stand out track on the album is “Party (I Have Never),” which begins with a pulsing beat and the brilliant, haunting line “I have never been naked in front of a man before.” Another beautiful track is “Killer Whale,” which sounds like an undiscovered Julee Cruise track and features a spoken word section that echoes back to 60s girl groups like The Shangri-Las.

On Party!,the influence of Mazzy Star and This Mortal Coil are undeniable, but their influences are much broader. Macomber draws inspiration from cinema, which she works in, saying, “I’m always inspired by how the mind collages experiences and film is sort of the pinnacle expression of that.”

Louis highlights David Lynch’s film soundtracks as a key influence and adds that, despite Austin’s vibrant music scene, Macomber’s songwriting remains his biggest inspiration. Looking ahead, Macomber hopes to tour in the autumn, while Louis notes they have enough material for two albums.

That sense of coziness tinged with disquiet runs throughout Goodbyehouse. “We’ve both gone through changes and break-ups in different relationships and contexts the past year,” they explain. “Goodbyes have been said to important people and places—lovers, friends, childhood homes, regular hangout spots. I think a kind of separation anxiety and mourning mixed with joy and excitement for the ‘new’ has inspired the album a lot. It took me a while to realize how much the album title actually encapsulates this feeling. Moving away from ‘home’.”

Snuggle first appeared in late 2023 with the EP Calendula, a fragile, heartfelt collection shaped by grief and renewal. Its title draws on overlapping personal symbols: “The Danish word for calendula is morgenfrue, which translates to ‘morning-misses,’” Strange explains. “It was my dad’s favorite flower, and Søren [Holm, the late frontman of Liss] once gave me a drawing he made of a calendula.” That quiet layering of memory about family, friendship, and absence lent the record a weight of remembrance, full of dreamy textures and raw, unguarded emotion. If Calendula was about holding on, Goodbyehouse embraces departures and transitions, post-grief and forward-facing. It doesn’t erase sadness, but it carries it into the future, toward new homes, new goodbyes, and whatever comes next.

Snuggle by Johanna Hvidtved

Immediate highlights like “Sun Tan” and “Woman Lake” showcase snuggle’s gift for bittersweet earworms. The opener, “Sun Tan,” is all luminous riffs and vaporized beats, the kind of song that feels effervescent until you notice the shadows creeping along the edges. “Woman Lake,” meanwhile, is their most direct and folky moment to date: acoustic strums and bowed strings unfurling into a chorus that feels like cannonballing into cloudy water. Andrea Thuesen sings of Minnesota, mosquito bites and Saint Paul summers, despite never having set foot in the state. “Sometimes people relay stories to you in such a way that you feel like you’re a part of it,” she explains. “And if you’re really close to them spiritually, even more so. Like you share a reality that exceeds the frame of your relationship. You become part of the other person’s whole life, even the parts you weren’t around for.” Memory, even imagined memory, becomes a ghostly collaborator.

‘Duality’ has been kind of a key word for this album

But snuggle’s genius is just as clear in their more oblique cuts. “Dust,” their apocalyptic love song, leans on a funky drum loop and dream-pop shimmer, conjuring cicadas, melting ice cream, and David Lynch visions of burning cities. Humor and fear feel equally present. “It definitely draws a parallel to everyday life,” Thuesen says. “A regular rollercoaster of ups and downs, conflicting feelings and experiences coexisting. It’s what life is made up of, I reckon. ‘Duality’ has been kind of a key word for this album—both lyric, composition and production wise. Working with contrasts like organic and synthetic, humor and melancholy, digital and analogue etc.”

Elsewhere, “Marigold” buries a cello under jagged guitar and slyly anthemic lyrics, turning intimacy into blunt secrecy. Much of Goodbyehouse’s texture emerged through improvisation and authenticity. “A lot of it comes from improvising and keeping the mistakes,” Strange says. “An acoustic guitar left bare, a drum machine slightly off, strings treated more like voices than instruments. Those things just kept happening and started to feel central to how we sound.”

Throughout, Goodbyehouse grapples with displacement: losing a café job of nearly a decade, saying goodbye to a childhood home, watching grounding points vanish. The record feels like a meditation on leaving safety, on stepping into a future that is both exhilarating and terrifying. Thuesen and Strange translate that duality into songs that are lush but unsettled, soft but restless, always circling an unspoken question. At the end of the album, “Water in a Pond” distills the band’s ethos most poignantly: a gloomy, self-aware love song carrying equal parts sorrow and devotion. It sounds like two people trying to hold still in a world that won’t stop shifting.

Snuggle releases on Escho, the Copenhagen label that has consistently set the agenda for adventurous Scandinavian music. Thuesen is quick to stress that the community is real but not monolithic: “It’s great being in close proximity to these great artists and friends and having a community around music and the label. But we’re all artists in our own capacity that make very different music and I don’t think I really consider us a joined ‘scene’ in that sense.” Alongside luminaries like Fine, Astrid Sonne, Smerz, and Elias Rønnenfelt, snuggle extend the label’s tradition of treating fragility, intimacy, and experimentation not as contradictions but as the lifeblood of contemporary pop. Now that they said ‘Goodbyehouse‘, snuggle themselves describe what comes next simply: “Touring the world, keep at it with writing and composing, keep on rocking!”

The record was born in Los Angeles, a place they’d long envisioned through the strange glow of cinema. “We’d always imagined LA through the lens of David Lynch: saturated in surrealism, a little menacing, a little magical — and that’s exactly how it felt. A puzzling, but beautiful cultural shock,” they recall. That atmosphere saturates the whole album, from the opener “Delusional On Sunset Boulevard” to the ghostly closer, “Silver Lake Mystery Forest.”

For Pearly Drops, Hollywood is more symbol than setting. “At its heart, this album is about the emotional unraveling that can happen when you chase a dream too hard—when fantasy and ambition start to bleed into your sense of identity,” they explain. The result is autofiction: storytelling as self-portrait, where fantasy landscapes mirror very real struggles with identity, ambition, and burnout.

Musically, the record is packed with moments that linger. “Demonlover” builds into a feverish climax, its final pulse echoing like a heart machine. “Ratgirl” takes the listener underground, a dance track wrapped in neon shadows that throbs with the sting of disillusionment, haunted by promises that never arrive. And “Silver Lake Mystery Forest” ventures into experimental territory, with a warped and otherworldly finale where sound itself seems to twist and breathe.

The duo’s process remains deeply personal. “We don’t identify as an indie rock band, but we don’t feel like an electronic act either,” they explain. “We composed, wrote, produced and mixed the entire album just the two of us with our own hands. Sandra has also painted all the cover arts by hand. For our artistic expression, it’s important to see through the whole process ourselves.”

Their inspirations seep into every note. Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is a guiding spirit: “There would be no Pearly Drops as we know it without David Lynch. His influence on us, even on a personal level, cannot be overstated. His film Mulholland Drive seems to make more sense as we grow older… and has inspired our third album immensely.”

The gear is equally essential. “This synthesizer has found its way into nearly every song we make,” they say of the Moog Minimoog Model D. “It doesn’t have presets, so each sound must be shaped from scratch. It’s a beautiful instrument, one that continues to offer us endless inspiration.” Polyphonic synths like the Juno-106 and Prophet-10 also run through the record: “In our hands it always feels like holding Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks soundtrack at our fingertips.”

Beyond instruments, their aesthetic pulls from unexpected corners. “For some reason, we’ve always seen Italian Giallo films, especially Dario Argento’s Suspiria, and Rondò Veneziano‘s album La Serenissima as part of the same continuum,” they note. “It’s like a mashup of two worlds: ’70s and ’80s supernatural horror fantasy intertwined with Baroque pop. It lingers with us, and honestly, we’re not sure that’s such a bad thing.”

Semi-modular synths added another layer of unpredictability. “There are no presets, so you get to build and patch every sound from the ground up. That’s led to a lot of unexpected and wonderfully messy results, which you can hear in tracks like ‘Demonlover,’ ‘Pillow Face,’ and ‘Silver Lake Mystery Forest.’ It’s almost like those songs passed through an imaginary David Lynch or Dario Argento filter on our way to Hollywood.”

By the time the record fades out, Pearly Drops have taken listeners through an eerie yet deeply human dreamscape. “It feels like with this third album, we bottled up that feeling of losing your mind and your identity when trying to chase your dreams — whatever they happen to be,” they reflect. Strange, beautiful, and haunted by disillusionment, The Voices Are Coming Back is Pearly Drops‘ boldest and eeriest work to date.

 

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“Cold pop” may sound like a gimmick, but it makes sense when you hear it. “It was actually coined by Big Jeff from Bristol,” the band explain. “To us it reflects a certain dark edge in the music and a collective directness.” There are echoes of The xx in the skeletal arrangements and frosted edges, but thredd sidestep imitation with a sharper rhythmic drive and a willingness to let their songs smolder rather than simply brood. On opening track “Horseshow,” Will’s post-trip hop drum programming locks into Max’s uncanny harmonic instincts, while Immy’s vocals hover like condensation on glass, fragile but insistent. “Horseshow for me,” Will adds, “presents a strong imagery that is conjured up by the writing and production working in harmony… it’s a nice balance of tongue in cheek but seriousness.” The result isn’t frigid so much as suspended, the kind of pop that resists warmth until it suddenly cracks open.

“We just didn’t have time to question a lot of decisions”

The immediacy of It’s Lovely, Come On In stems directly from its origins. “We just didn’t have time to question a lot of decisions,” they say of their Laylow residency. “It was really beneficial because a lot of it was based purely on instincts as a group.” That urgency thrums through the record: “We Don’t Speak Anymore” lashes out with a one-day’s work volatility, while “Funny Girl” strips everything to bare confessions. Immy recalls, “The lyrics were pulled from a vulnerable notes app entry I’d made a while back… I felt like I’d given a very raw and real bit of myself to the process. I felt more glued-in after that.”

During those weeks holed up at Laylow, the band also immersed themselves in shared listening sessions that seeped into the creative process. “Britney — In The Zone. Radiohead — TKOL RMX 1234567. Massive Attack — Mezzanine,” they list, alongside Metronomy and other 90s touchstones. You can hear that spectrum play out across the album. “Party”’s dance-floor surge echoes Britney’s pop ambition, while “Something For My Head” channels trip hop’s heavy-lidded tension. “’Something For My Head’ or ‘Horseshow’,” they reflect, “both capture the basement of Laylow in different ways… it was November, freezing cold, we were the only ones in the building.” That sense of isolation is baked into the tracks themselves, a reminder of the peculiar environment that birthed them.

thredd feel right at home with Scenic Route

What holds the album together is a refusal to sand down the edges. “The album never really got mixed,” they admit. “All the sounds and layers in it exist as they were recorded in, with barely any tweaking afterwards. Long live compression.” Scenic Route, the label behind the release, has built its reputation on spotlighting artists who thrive in the margins, and thredd feel right at home there. It’s Lovely, Come On In doesn’t posture as a grand statement: it’s too immediate, too unvarnished for that. Instead, it captures a fleeting moment of collaboration and survival, a snapshot of three musicians throwing their ideas into the air and watching them land in uncanny harmony.

And that atmosphere remains tethered to place. Asked to name one location that embodies the record, the band are quick to answer: “Laylow, specifically the room at the top where there were old clothes, bottles of booze, mannequins and a massive bath.” Like that room, the album is cluttered and uncanny, but charged with unexpected magic. It’s not a debut that tries to prove too much, it just opens the door and invites you into its peculiar vibe.

Her songs are immersive soundscapes, taking after the slowly evolving, ambient textures of artists like Julianna Barwick or Grouper, but still uniquely her own: quirky, colourful, contemplative and uplifting, often evocative of a hot and peaceful summer night characterised by the buzz of crickets.

Her most recent record, Dominant Heartstrings exemplifies her artistic confidence 10 studio records in, with sound design rich in compelling, lo-fi qualities and Elsa’s vocals stronger and more captivating than ever.

Below we present an interview with Elsa, conducted in summer 2024 while she was performing a series of shows across the UK, and also working on Dominant Heartstrings.

HighClouds: How are the live shows going?

Live shows are going well, people have responded very positively. Everyone who has heard the new songs seems to be in agreement that they’re bangers.

I’m enjoying being away from the computer and having a simple set-up that I can tweak, switch and add on to quite easily. I’m also enjoying recording new sounds to add into the set, along with the journey, although it’s something that I was already doing with my improvised ambient sets that I was touring in October 2021.

I’ve noticed my singing has come through when I perform the songs, sometimes unsurprisingly. I’ve been learning a lot of singing technique in the last month after spending my whole life refusing to have lessons due to a fear of sounding like everyone else.

I have realised that it’s more important to protect my voice, and get more freedom, elasticity and power in it, so I’ve started learning from teachers on YouTube. Things have massively shifted forward since making certain discoveries. Plus, some of the songs I’m performing are quite hard to sing due to them being quite a high register for me, with lots of words.

How difficult is to recreate your fairly experimental records in a live setting? Are there recurring challenges, or at this point in your career is the process really natural?

I have tried many different ways of doing solo electronic live sets over the past 7 years. I know now where my limits are in terms of how much I can be doing at one time without getting flustered and not being able to fully feel the flow of the music.

Now I have pretty well established the approach I enjoy, that strikes the right balance. I do enjoy applying it in slightly different ways to all the new songs. Each song provides different opportunities as well as limitations.

One of the main challenges for me is to stand up and being seen without getting shy, without necessarily having to busy myself behind lots of activity to distract myself from the attention.

I’ve been very aware for a long time about this perceived pressure that I need to look like I’m doing loads of stuff, when the reality is there is only so much that I can do alone without completely stripping it back and playing something different to the recordings.

I find a blend is always best. I would love to have a band to figure out completely live versions of my songs.

Elsa Hewitt by Darius Williams

You started recording your 2024 record Chaos Emeralds in lockdown. How did that affect it?

Lockdown imbued it with a certain atmosphere, there was like a mixture of tension and stillness, unusual and new emotions, much sadness and uncertainty, collective feelings, chaos and confusion, all of that was feeding into it.

The music I was making was like the transmutation of these energies, abstract expressions, the sprouts of personal and collective transformation. There was also this renewed sense of love for nature and an appreciation of everything in the immediate environment.

You’ve spoken about how music gave you satisfaction and security when you were young. What do you think the link is between music and mental health?

Music is so evocative, in a spiritual way. It’s a pattern of resonance. When you like certain music it’s because it resonates with you on an energetic level, so in many ways it reminds you that you’re not alone and reflects the beauty of your life back to you.

Equally, it’s the gel that brings people together. I think it can help you tap into your underlying emotions and feelings, and can help you gain a higher perspective because of that. It helps you release what is stuck and move with what is coming through. So, it’s very important.

You used to live and study in Toulouse, France. How did living there affect your growth as a musician?

I did a lot of jamming with musicians I met there. Before going there, I had just made my first electronic album (Hotel Rosemary), so I brought my synth along with me and performed songs from it while I was there.

However, because of the solitude of being in a new place I ended up writing a whole album of songs acoustically, developing my finger picking, writing more in French, listening to a lot of dance music and jamming with a lot with other people. I ended up with a lot of ideas.

Which music comforts you the most nowadays?

I’ve found comforting vibes recently when listening to Terry Riley, Kirk Barley, Lonnie Holley, Ulla; artists I listened to a lot when I was younger, like PJ Harvey and The Beach Boys.

Also, folk music that other people put on, vintage classics and instrumental hip hop beats, especially those made by my friends.

Dominant Heartstrings is out now on Elsa’s own imprint ERH Records.

Originally formed in Lima, Peru by Adele Fournet and Felipe Wurst, Brooklyn-based group Tipa Tipo isn’t afraid to mix sounds, textures, and ideas. Their music melds genres and melodies, breaking new ground as they fuse older pop conventions with Latin-inspired rhythms. On their latest release, “Grifo,” Tipa Tipo even blends languages. In the multilingual track, the group reflects on the connection between life and death, ruminating on the dead that live among us, from the animal carcasses that make the gas that fuels our cars to the bodies that sit in the graveyards in our communities. With its groovy baseline, Fournet‘s smooth vocals, and drummer Jordan Auber collaborated with funky drums, the track perfectly balances fun and fatalism in a flamboyant fashion.

But the buck doesn’t stop there for Tipa Tipo. The group has also released a visually and artistically astute music video, directed by the band’s very own Adele Fournet. The video features dynamic dancing and eye-catching backdrops. It’s a visual spectacular that romanticizes the dirty and wasteful, a dance that finds choreography in both natural and mechanical movement.

The resulting product is a track and accompanying video that are both meaningful and catchy. HighClouds was lucky enough to catch up with Tipa Tipo to discuss the process that went into creating “Grifo,” their headspace as they look toward releasing their first full-length LP, and the challenges and triumphs they’ve experienced since transitioning from Lima to the Brooklyn music scene. Read our entire conversation below, and don’t forget to stream “Grifo” as soon as humanly possible.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

HighClouds: Talk us through the process of writing and recording “Grifo.”

I wrote this song while in quarantine with the Omicron variant of COVID, and my window overlooked two gas stations at a big intersection in South Brooklyn. I wrote the opening lyrics in a feverish state while looking at the throbbing lights of those desolate stations. I saw the gas stations as homing beacons, calling all survivors after the apocalypse. The song grew into a meditation about life running on death, especially in the form of the liquid fossils that we pump into our vehicles for fuel. The second verse develops this theme further, but this time in the context of The Green-Wood Cemetery. This cemetery is very close to my house, and is one of my favorite places to spend hours admiring the enormous trees and imagining past lives of the people who nourish them.

We recorded “Grifo” at our studio in Brooklyn. Like many of our tracks, it was a process of reconstructing the Logic demo by replacing and augmenting the MIDI arrangements with real instruments. I knew that I wanted the instrumentation to juxtapose the mosquito-like electric guitars of old chicha recordings with the luscious electric pianos and synths of disco in order to conjure this hybrid genre we’ve been going for that we’re calling “tropical disco.” Highlights from the studio include recording with our Tipa Tipo drummer, Jordan Auber— Who really took the drums and percussion to a whole new level on this track– and recording a real vibraphone with our friend Erica Mancini. Getting Felipe‘s lead guitars to sound both danceable and annoying was also a fun challenge. We had a lot of fun creating the ambient disco vocal stabs that occur throughout the track by running many layers of harmonies through our SurfyBear spring reverb pedal. SurfyBear is definitely a big part of this track.

“Grifo” is a multilingual track, featuring both Spanish and English. Does your songwriting approach change when you compose in different languages?

We are a bilingual band, so in a way writing bilingual songs is the most intuitive and natural outcome. Felipe‘s native language is Spanish, my native language is English, and we talk all day in Spanglish. However, I’ve often feared that writing in two languages could alienate a listener – if the song starts in English, and then switches to Spanish, maybe the English-speaking listener could feel lost or confused, or vice versa? But with “Grifo,” the verses came to me so clearly in English, and the choruses in Spanglish, that it felt like the only way to do justice to the song was to write it in both languages.

The video for “Grifo” is super engaging with its unique shooting locations, trippy effects, and imaginative choreography. Where did the idea for the video come from? What was the shooting and editing process like?

The music video for “Grifo” takes place in three different Brooklyn locations that contrast the industrial and organic elements of the city—The gas stations that originally inspired the song, The Green-Wood Cemetery, and a scrap metal processing plant in Gowanus right next to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I have a longstanding collaboration with the Peruvian choreographer and multidisciplinary artist Moyra Silva, in which we create site-specific dance pieces and installations that interrogate the relationship between human bodies and urban spaces. We did a site-specific videodance piece in Perú right before the pandemic, called “Limas Utópicas,” and were excited to have the opportunity to work together again after so many years. Moyra and I developed the movements for “Grifo” in response to the locations and the music, while implementing the imagery of oil pumps, machinery, connection, and running. I really like the aesthetic and feeling tone of non-narrative experimental films like Godfrey Reggio‘s Koyaanisqatsi, so we decided to blend the shots of our choreography with a collage of archival footage to create a series of tableaus portraying the relationship between fossil fuel consumption, death, and human connection.

While “Grifo” is an upbeat and dancey track, the video and lyrics certainly have fatalistic undertones. What is it like to create art when it feels like the world is ending?

The end of the world as we know it has always been a subject matter that interests me as a songwriter, but with a twist and a sense of humor. I love writing upbeat dance tracks about the world ending and fleshing out a lyrical portrayal of what that might look like. I think it makes me feel existentially better to sing about hard topics while everyone is dancing—It’s a catharsis in which we can hold opposing feelings at the same time. I love the science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, in part because much of her world-building occurs in post-disaster scenarios. What do we do once the world as we know it ends? In “Grifo,” we have a dance party at the gas station as everyone stocks up on provisions.

Tipa Tipo was originally formed in Peru. Can you tell us more about your origin story as a band? What was it like adjusting to the scene in Brooklyn?

Felipe and I met in Lima in 2010 and started collaborating on original music soon thereafter. We played in a band called Humanimals and were in a small but blossoming experimental pop scene in Lima, with bands like Alejandro y María Laura, La Lá, and Kanaku y El Tigre. I got an opportunity to do a PhD program in Ethnomusicology at NYU, so we moved to New York and basically started over as musicians and artists in the US in 2013. The music scene in Brooklyn was enormous in comparison, and a lot more competitive and demoralizing. We stopped playing original music as a duo for many years and only played as supporting musicians for other people’s projects and worked on our own solo projects. Notably, I released a solo instrumental album in that time under my own name called Foremothers and Felipe was playing with the Latin experimental band La Mecanica Popular. In that time, we also started learning about production and engineering and slowly started to experiment more with analog recording techniques. We bought a Tascam cassette recorder and recorded our first EP as Tipa Tipo, which reignited our passion for creating original music despite the challenges of the New York scene. While living in Brooklyn we also developed a passion for Peruvian bands from the 60s, 70s, and 80s that were developing their a unique cumbia sound, including Los Orientales de Paramonga, Los Mirlos, and Los Destellos. These bands have gone on to influence our sound as we explore this nexus between tropical and disco.

Your new first full-length LP Cintas will be released early next year. What should listeners look forward to hearing on the record? What has been the biggest challenge in preparing for the release? What part of the process has been most joyous?

This record is an inflection point between the yacht rock en español we were doing with our previous EP, El Chari, and the dance-oriented tropical disco we’ve started pursuing more recently. The new album has songs that fall all along that spectrum. It’s taken two years to write and record Cintas, and we’ve especially enjoyed honing our process and techniques as producers and engineers. We’ve overcome a lot of creative fears when it comes to writing and recording, and are more fluid with our flow working individually and together. Some of the album was recorded to tape, some of it is digital—We just did whatever felt right for each song in each moment.

Now for a few quickfire questions. If you could open for any band or artist (alive, dead, active, broken up— everyone is fair game) on tour, what band or artist would it be?

Wings.

If you had to create a cocktail to pair with “Grifo,” what would the drink be?

Definitely a Chilcano with gas station ginger ale.

What will 2024 bring for Tipa Tipo?

Our album release, more shows, and more new music on the way!