Helsinki duo Pearly Drops (Sandra Tervonen and Juuso Malin) have always been drawn to that hazy border where the ordinary dissolves into something otherworldly. Their third album, The Voices Are Coming Back, out via Music Website, is steeped in that tension: a surreal, shimmering journey through Hollywood dreams, eerie detours, and the disillusionment that comes with chasing something too hard.
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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