Listen: Losing Focus — Dance Yourself Clean

Losing Focus arrives amidst the kind of all encompassing, thick sound that evokes big rooms, smoke machines and body music. Warm bass, a polished guitar lick and a female vocal harmonies come together to depict the breathless moment of losing yourself in someone else.

Dance Yourself Clean started in Seattle back in 2013 as an indie dance party, before expanding their scope to become a touring dance party across North America. Eventually, they relocated to Los Angeles and created their own label, Lights & Music Collective, and began producing for other artists. Releasing music and remixes under their own name became the obvious next step.

Check out Losing Focus below, and look out for the gorgeous bridge, where the gravity of the song relents. The vocal floats in space as it calls on us to “Hold me down, no sound… Just hold me, hold me down”, before being grounded in the song’s dependable beat.

Watch: White Rabbit — Courtney Farren

Awash with reverb and a heavy kick drum, Courtney Farren’s White Rabbit punches its way into your brain with plenty of sparkle but limited subtlety. Things can be deceptive, though, because whilst the song’s fuzzy guitars and clipped, lo-fi drums sound like they would be at home in a late 90s teen movie, Farren’s vocal is juxtaposed to great effect.

All the distorted bass and grimy instrumentation creates the perfect backing for Courtney’s Angelique delivery. White Rabbit’s chorus centred around a yearning delivery of the line, “You had me at hello” that is both as nostalgic a line as the sound, and utterly irresistible in performance.

Hailing from the Bay Area, Farren has spent much of her life on the road, playing shows as she travelled locations that include New York, Paris, Dublin and, most recent, Los Angeles. This latest base comes following a period spend in a remote village in Croatia, where she focused on refining her production and songwriting skills. She is now working on a project, set for release in 2022/2023, with production duties shared between Brad Hale, Ethan Schneiderman, and herself.

Designed as to be a fun, energising record, Courtney describes the inspiration behind White Rabbit:

“As an unnatural blonde, I created this song to play with people's expectations of me. It's pop, it's fun, and it's an exploration of a new relationship after getting out of a longterm relationship.”

Watch: Now Is Love — Murmur Tooth & Lars Moston

Following on from their recent single Antidote, Murmur Tooth & Lars Moston are back again with another shot of electronic-disco-pop in the form of Now Is Love.

In contrast to Antidote’s sun kissed yearning, Now Is Love bounces along — a fizzy chord progression riding chunky drums. Murmur Tooth’s vocal delivers a dose of glamour, as she asks, “Hey you, where you going with that starlight?” The sound combines a glossy sheen with a tactile, post-punk sense of energetic distortion.

The observation might clock that Now Is Love’s title is a subtle reference to The KLF’s rave anthem What Time Is Love, whose dance-pop sound is obviously an influence Lars’ sound. The title is a statement of intent — the song is a direct invitation to join in the fun, to lose yourself and dance. Check out the video, filmed in the Egyptian desert and New Zealand mountains, below:

Listen: Stay — Head Under Water

Stay surrounds the listener in bluesy, soulful vocals and soft piano keys, evoking the feel of crisp autumnal days. Throughout the song’s near four-minute duration, Head Under Water slowly constructs texture and detail around the central vocal and piano. Thick bass lines, bubbling synths and snappy percussion embellish the song like an idea that drops roots to become a deep-seated belief.

Head Under Water’s latest song is about those “things you leave behind that always remain a part of you”… The hard times that make you grateful for the fact you survived them. Describing the process of creating the song, Head Under Water said:

“Among all the songs I've ever written, this one took the longest from its first origin to it's finished form - finally I found enough distance to understand what I had begun to process 6 years earlier and was able to complete it.”

Head Under Water is a singer-songwriter, and one half of duo Komplement, whose track Far appeared on BlackPlastic back in 2018. Prior to Komplement, Head Under Water was already established as a solo artist in his own right. Coming from a traditional musical background, he looks to combine organic songwriting with electronic production techniques.

Stay is the second single lifted from Head Under Water’s forthcoming debut EP, Opaque. Check it out below.

Listen: Saint — Ladysse

Having previously appeared on BlackPlastic with her chugging anthem, Heartbreak Hollywood, and the warm blanket of Dopamine, Ladysse is once again back on these pages, and in my ears.

Where Ladysse, real name Stephanie Lauren, has generally stuck out for St Vincent style sophistication, here on Saint she is channeling something different. Saint feels akin to the quiet-loud-quiet of Kim Deal meets the modern-alt-rock of Metric. Opening with some seriously low-slung bass guitar, kick-drum and snares, the song initially leans heavily into Stephanie’s attitude-heavy vocal delivery.

It is Saint’s chorus that really lodges itself in my memory, however, kicked off by Lauren crying “I give up…” as the instruments let loose around her. Fuzzy guitars join that bass guitar to create a wall of noise, and the drums keep kicking like a hole punch sliding in-and-out of my mind. The whole performance wreaks of confidence, Ladysse on top of her game and throwing down so much more than expected on this track.