A self-proclaimed absurdist Ghoul Pop producer and multimedia artist based out of Los Angeles, Soul Bandit crafts dance-pop music that sounds both nostalgic and futuristic. Drawing from the music that accompanied her as a kid in the 90s and 2000s, she mixes Europop, happy hardcore and DDR-type high energy rave music with a hyper pop vibe that obviously recalls labels like PC Music and Palettes to mind. Creating homemade synths with Toys-R-Us material, Soul Bandit is always looking for new ways to bring her glitchy and playful pop to another level.

Today, we’re super excited to premiere “Rose Colored Glasses”, a particularly catchy bubblegum bop with plastic arrangements and digitalized vocals. About the track, she explained:

[su_quote]”Rose Colored Glasses” is a song about gaining the strength and courage to remove a toxic individual from your life. It’s about putting the past aside and consciously choosing a path of happiness, optimism, and thus (as the idiom goes) seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. Additionally, the over the top bubblegum dance-pop vibe of the track & artificial vocal processing are a nod to the fake-it-till-you-make-it mentality that many people choose to adopt in order to ultimately find peace in letting go.[/su_quote]

If you dig this track, check our Spotify playlist Edgy Poppers.

Though the experimental Los Angeles-based artist has only been releasing music on Soundcloud for eleven months, in that time she has built up quite the impressive catalog of downtempo ballads and house music masterpieces through the releases of singles and even collective bodies of work.

Now, Soul Bandit‘s newest single “Living A Dream” is the hauntingly catchy new tune featuring her signature boom bap drum lines topped with lo-fi melodies and iridescent, almost un-distinguishable vocals. It’s the gritty and honest nature from Mattingly that makes the music so special. Her songs are by no means perfect, but reflect a clear window of inspiration, and a beacon of light which which the watered down electronic music scene so desperately needs.

The message portrayed in “Living A Dream” is one of the most noteworthy aspects of the composition. The song is written about abandoning the faux-accomplishments in life and focusing on creating inner happiness. As Soul Bandit told Highclouds in an emailed statement:

[su_quote]We’re told by the media every single day, what things should make us happy in life, and what equals ‘success.’ No matter what industry we work in, we torture ourselves day after day, year after year, chasing these things that will make us happy, that will make us look the most successful and desirable in the eyes of other. But the thing is that the amount of money you have, the stuff you can buy, the size of your waistline, the number of social media followers you get – does not equal happiness or success. It’s just what we’re told happiness looks like. Money. Things. Status. More, more, more! There will always be more stuff to buy, more followers to get, more money to earn. And yet there are 844 million people right now that don’t even have access to clean water. That’s 1 in 9 people. And yet here we are, living in our bubble, feeling worthless if we don’t have the newest iPhone, don’t have a certain amount of social media followers, and don’t have Kim Kardashian’s ass.[/su_quote]

“Living A Dream” is out today and Highclouds has the pleasure of premiering the record. Take a listen below, and keep an eye out for more content from Soul Bandit very soon.