After reshaping their sound back in July of this year, Victoria Draovitch and Steve Grzenda have been working towards their debut EP as a duo. SELF IMPROVEMENT is the reflective, raw and introspective fruit of their labour. Each individual track on the EP charts a different struggle with mental health, that both members of the band have suffered from.

The closing track of the EP, “BETTER,” was penned as a cathartic final track. Drauve wanted to end to this project with the question “What’s it gonna take to make it all better?”. Whilst they acknowledge that this may not be a “typically positive” way to conclude, the moody track is delicately beautiful.

With the aim to “support listeners who may be struggling alone”, “BETTER” is moody yet oddly uplifting in its frank honesty. It explores the feelings of hopelessness and exhaustion that oftentimes go hand in hand with battling mental health issues. Filled with rhetorical questions that only Victoria and Steve themselves can answer, it’s self-aware and philosophical whilst retaining a universal appeal; these are thoughts that we have all ruminated over in hard times.

Victoria Draovitch’s voice lends itself perfectly to the guitar-led backdrop. Light synths are scattered throughout the despondent soundscape, creating a brevity amongst the darkness of these circulating questions. Yes, we were craving for something more fun to conclude this catastrophic year but “BETTER” is the actual catharsis we were all needing.

After releasing three stellar singles back in 2019, with “Haunted” being one of our favourite tracks of that year, Pittsburgh-based quartet Drauve disappeared into the ether. However, this disappearance was fully warranted and justifiable. Now a duo comprised of original members Victoria Draovitch and Stephen Grzenda, Drauve have been reimagining their sound, drawing on more pop influences and gearing up to showcase their new direction. “LMK” – standing for “Let Me Know” – is the first glance into this new path forward.

With its laid back beat and languid vocals, “LMK” is simply infectious. The track sizzles along with the swirling guitars echoing some stabbing synths. Drauve describe themselves as “friends making hazy tunes in a hazy basement” and it’s pretty relevant as “LMK” possesses a truly foggy quality. This is to its praise though; the combination of the woozy, repetitive vocals and the straightforward beat is one of a cool mystique.

“LMK” is dream-pop with unprecedented danceable quality. It blends itself nicely into the chillwave genre, quite ironically when noting the subject of the track. “It’s a song about the anxiety of not knowing where someone close to you is, whether that be a friend or an estranged lover,” Drauve stated. The repeated refrain “You said you’d let me know when you got home last night” builds upon this tension.

Harsh and unpredictable, the end to the track acts as a dramatic climax. Suddenly ejected from the dreamy atmosphere, the listener is forced to experience the trouble and disempowerment of the character in the most efficient way.

Boyish, the duo comprising India Shore and Claire Altendhal who curates our Queeropedia playlist this month, has just released a new album today. Garden Spider features the previously released singles “FUCK YOU HEATHER“, “zodiac killer“, “anxious butterball” as well as the highlight “AnDroGay”, a soulful new offering exploring gender roles. Listen to the track and stream the whole album below.

When India Shore was a student at Berklee College of Music, she needed someone to accompany her for an audition. Her friend’s roommate, Claire Altendahl, helped her out. In 2016 they formed the alt-country duo The Blue, and after graduating from Berklee, the pair’s musical chemistry evolved into a dreamier, darker sound as Boyish.

Boyish‘s debut single, “Brooklyn Red,” is a queer love poem full of cross-country longing and sharp, bluesy guitars. The video, which the band released in April of 2019, features India in bed with her tied wrists being puppeteered by someone off-screen, lit by a stylish blend of red and blue hues known as “bisexual lighting.”

A few months later, in October, they released a video for “July,” the lead single from their self-released 2018 record Carnation. The track leans even further into dark, sultry blues vibes, with the occasional country twang accenting its improvised guitar riffs. India’s vocals hit a sweet spot between soft crooning and pained howling on the lines, “Baby, baby, I / Ooh babe, I’m not your darling.” What’s more, the video features slow-dancing queer affection and more extremely on-brand bisexual lighting.

Later that same month, the duo released “Ghost” on New York label Invertebrate. It’s a dreamy, folk-tinged slow burner of a track that builds up to an incredibly satisfying payoff; in the lyrics, India lays out a relatable list of laments — lonely nights, playing the waiting game, being too broke to move to New York.

“Our songwriting process is very chaotic,” the band told HighClouds. “We usually write by separately coming up with little bits and pieces of songs, and then when we are together we piece them together into one song and write lyrics. We usually love a song for the first week then feel like we should trash the whole thing.”

In early December, the pair dropped “Zodiac Killer,” a slow, glittery track about “growing up while everything is going wrong, big gay sadness, and realizing that people aren’t always who you thought they were.” You know, life. The song expertly incorporates a voicemail interstitial between dreamy guitars and watery synths.

Speaking of the Zodiac, HighClouds has exclusive intel that India is an Aries Sun, Libra Moon, and Scorpio rising, and Claire is a Leo Sun, Scorpio Moon, and Sagittarius rising. All that fire energy and those Scorpio placements basically explain how these two are so good at writing dark, sexy, high-energy pop tracks.

I love when a song’s title really speaks for itself. On “FUCK YOU HEATHER,” Boyish cycles through every possible human emotion on their way to finding closure after a breakup. The track begins with gently plucked guitars and ends on blown-out, atonal synth flares, mirroring the emotional journey and chaos of the lyrics. It makes sense that this is a theme that’s on their minds, since some of their favorite artists right now are FKA Twigs, Frank Ocean, Girl in Red, Mannequin Pussy, and Muna.

On January 31, Boyish released their latest single on Invertebrate. It’s called “Anxious Butterball,” and it’s a dreamy pop track about the physical manifestations of anxiety.

“When writing ‘Anxious Butterball’, India went into a room for ten minutes and came back and sang the opening lines in a weird country/Phish vibe. It stumped us for about two weeks before I went into Logic and made the opening hits to the song,” Claire told HighClouds. “Lyrically, I was driving home and thought about how when both India and I have anxiety we gain weight and sweat a lot, so the name ‘Anxious Butterball’ (Butterball being our roundness) popped into my head. From there, we decided to write about the ridiculous anxiety symptoms we feel.”

If you’re in New York, you can catch Boyish at C’mon Everybody in Brooklyn on February 27 with Uruguay, Syd Silvair, and Madeleine Mcqueen. If you’re not, you can keep hitting replay on “Anxious Butterball” until your crush texts you back. It’s ok, we won’t judge.

Check out India and Claire’s picks for Queeropedia using the player below (also available on Apple Music), and get ready for their debut album Garden Spider on February 14.

All the previous episodes of Queeropedia are available on our Spotify profile.

“Now I don’t even know you / lost your name in a shitstorm I caused,” sings 22-year old India Shore, who is a member of the alt-country and queer project Boyish, which she started with guitarist Claire Altendhal.

Following up to “Ghost” and “zodiac killer,” “FUCK YOU HEATHER” combines anger and resentment with that pure, early 20s confusion about how relationships should (or shouldn’t) function. The track starts with an indie-acoustic, summer-lovin’ guitar tune, courtesy of Altendhal, with Shore crooning sweet nothings until you realise that “FUCK YOU HEATHER” is not a love song – it’s a breakup bop.

Boyish take the listener through a mirage of built-up emotions (anger, remorse, hope) and through various stages of grief experienced while ending a relationship. There is the obvious pain and guilt, as well as denial and bargaining (“We could be friends / we could be friends…”).

A cathartic moment comes when Shore screams the titular “Fuck you Heather”, followed by the spiralling sounds of bass, synthesisers and drums, heavily contrasted by the minimal, calm start of the tune.

Overall, this new track is not that different from their previous releases. On the other hand, it marks a certain breakthrough in manifesting more negative emotions through their music in a level of self-awareness that is rarely seen in even much older musicians. Listen below.

Boyish, that another writer of HighClouds described as “dark, breathy, gay shit” in a private conversation, is a duo formed by “two very confused” 22-year-old artists, India Shore and Claire Altendhal. Since their formation in 2016, they have already achieved to attract attention as their 2018’s debut album, Carnation, got nominated for an Independent Music Award, in the alt-country category.

Following up to their indie-rock elegy “Ghost“, they’re now back with another dreamy track titled “zodiac killer”. Besides the snippets of conversation, which encapsulate the anxiety and struggles they face in their daily life, the vulnerable song boasts on a hypnotic, captivating final build-up. When asked about the track, they commented: “‘zodiac killer’ is a song about growing up while everything is going wrong, big gay sadness, and realizing that people aren’t always who you thought they were.”

Pittsburg’s up and coming dream-pop band Drauve follow-up on their captivating first singles, “Haunted” (already featured in our Best Tracks of 2019 playlist) and “Out Of It”, with a brand new track. Produced by Jake Urbanek, “Selling Out” sounds like a perfect autumnal offering with its hazy soundscapes and wistful lyrics. “What kind of love are you selling out for? / Is there a price you can put on the pain you ignore?/ Next to him in your bed with a clock overhead / Ask if this is all worth living for,” they sing. After having supported Remo Drive, Palehound, and SAMIA in their hometown of Pittsburg this fall, the quartet will release new music early 2020 so stay tuned…