“Beware” is taken from Lavender Blue‘s upcoming EP, I Get Lost, to be released later this year.

Kayla Zuskin kept herself busy last year. Apart from her duties as a producer, the Asheville-based artist carried on with her Lavender Blue moniker by putting out a few singles and, most recently in December, by releasing an experimental EP that saw her dipping her toes into ambient. Zuskin has been expanding her arsenal, but that has not filtered through her main project yet. Now she is back with more straightforward material in the form of “Beware”, a new single off her upcoming sophomore EP.

“Beware” treads on familiar territory for most of its length; it is the kind of slow-paced, Americana-inspired indie rock that drew us to Lavender Blue in the first place, with Zuskin’s plaintive vocals firmly placed underneath sand waves of slightly off-kilter guitar chords, and instrumental crescendos being teased but not acted upon every once in a while. By the end of the song, though, she’s done with teasing – instead, she lets an unexpected guitar solo rip out. It’s not bombast for the sake of it but a way to finish the song in a determined and tenacious way. Like some of the best electronica done in the past year, “Beware” was inspired by Sabrina The Teenage Witch, pondering on eons-long ideas on good and evil through an American teenage sitcom. Who saw that coming?