Hailing from Buenos Aires but based in New York, Josi Arias has been releasing music as Agua Viva since 2017. Arias makes what can best be described as off-kilter bedroom pop. In her early, more song-based releases, Agua Viva would glue uncluttered electronic compositions with her love of actual bass and guitar, resulting in pop music modelled after DIY champions Molly Nilsson or Ariel Pink. Arias’s music has been increasingly becoming more electronic, a prime example being the free-form jam that gave birth to “Aura”, her first release of the year. These electronic experiments are now being seamlessly incorporated to her songwriting in her new single “Part of a Plan”.

The lead single off her forthcoming EP El Refugio de la Fantasía, “Part of a Plan” is synth-pop at its most mystic. Arias’s lyrical apocalyptic imagery blends perfectly with the slightly off synth tones and with the tune’s simple, spooky melodic, sung more like a spell than as a song. El Refugio de la Fantasía has been informed by genres never afraid to embrace the kitschy side of things such as noughties Eurodance, and you can hear that influence coming through the vocals and the simplified electronic foundations of “Part of a Plan”.

Agua Viva is also premiering the music video for the song: a grainy clip of Arias dancing around a bonfire in a forest. Just in time for Halloween!

Moving to a new country can be daunting. Moving to a new country and then releasing an album sounds near impossible. Yet that’s exactly what Argentinian artist Josi Arias, also known as Agua Viva, did. After finding success in the music scene of Buenos Aries, both in her own right and as part of the band Los Cripis, Agua Viva moved to Brooklyn to pursue her music career.

Her upcoming sophomore album El Hechizo de la Luna will mark her first release as a US citizen. On this new project, her tracks are derived from dream revelations, eclipses and moon spells. Assuredly in line with these inspirations, “Las estrellas se quiebran”, the lead single from the album, is a surrealist and off kilter dreamscape. From the opening transcendental vocalisations making way for warbling, hazy guitars, the track is embedded with a feeling that it’s running one step away from reality, like it’s not quite set to the same tempo as the rest of the world, in the most glorious way.

It conjures images of orbiting around the earth, swirling around just outside the Earth’s atmosphere. The foggy guitars lend the track a celestial feel, an otherworldly dynamic that manages to draw upon Agua Viva’s 80’s Latin pop influences, but also creates something very nostalgic, timeless in fact.

That’s not to say that “Las estrellas se quiebran” isn’t multi-faceted. There’s actually an oddly menacing side to it, an unease that’s procured from the cyclic, ascending scales of the bass guitar, pulsating under the airy vocals of Agua Viva. The track creates an air of veiled threat, almost as if it could fling you off into space at any time with no warning. It’s an exciting prospect, one that demands the attention of the listener and makes for obsessive looping of the track.

Watch the Irina JP-directed music video below.

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