Charlotte Rose Benjamin’s “Deep Cut” is out today on dreamtinarecords.

Like any pretentious music nerd, many of my favorite songs are deep cuts. I feel closer to these songs than I do to my favorite radio hits. It’s one thing to love a song everyone loves, it’s quite another to find something precious that most people don’t see. Charlotte Rose Benjamin’s new song “Deep Cut” is about a love like that – intimate, particular, a love not everyone would understand. “From the outside it didn’t make sense,” she says, “and there were a lot of reasons it didn’t work out. If it were a song it definitely wouldn’t have gotten a lot of radio play.” Loving a deep cut can be a jealous thing. You find yourself scorning fans of a band’s mainstream hits, clinging your special, underappreciated B-side to your chest. Your love with a deep cut can be all yours, but as such, it can also be lonely – there’s no crowd to sing along with you, flashlights waving overhead. You can’t wheel it out at karaoke night. There’s some of that in “Deep Cut” too – “living is lonely with or without you,” Benjamin sings.

“Deep Cut” is a fluid, hypotonic dance of waltzing guitars and warm, surefooted bass. It has some of the eyes closed, ethereal, float-away feel of shoegaze song, but gets there without all the feedback. Charlotte Rose Benjamin’s beautifully produced vocal is a diamond sharp shard of light amidst all that soft spinning sound. It feels right beside you, squeezed close by the ebb and flow of the instrumental, almost painfully intimate. The music video is the same – a vintage camcorder presses in close on Benjamin‘s eyes as she lies in a hotel bathtub, clad in a mint green slip dress. It’s as private as anyone’s relationship with their favorite song.