Łabandzi Śpiew: art pop

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Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys - Teen Tapes (for Performing Your Own Stunts) 2022

wtorek, 24 marca 2026

Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys - Pale Bloom (2026)

It's been already almost 10 years since Lucy Kruger started releasing albums with her band as Lucy Kruger & the Lost Boys and she proves that she has innumerable layers of artisticness and pure talent within herself. The albums are released so frequently one can lose track of Kruger's discography, but that's ok. I can assure you, they are only getting better and better.

The characteristic minimalism the artist nurtures evolves with every release, at least that's how I see it: it's not as rough and lone electric guitar-heavy, less of the dark blues vibe and more towards softer, dreamier art pop music. In some places even bordering with ambient pop's soundscape-y unintelligibleness of the backgrounds. It may be softer but it's certainly not much lighter: the darker shade of dreamy is the signature skill of Kruger's music and, first of all, lyrics which play the lead role in every song on this and any other release. And those can be extremely poignant and uneasy.

But the thing I love about this music is how effortlessly it combines the ethereally catchy parts with artsy, slightly less approachable in form, very often within one composition too. That's why Ambient Heat is definitely my favourite here: the short lyrical phrases that create a mosaic of fear and existential uncertainty contrast the beautifully executed chorus that contrasts the ambient pop formless parts. I could hardly not love this one.

Pale Bloom costs 9 EUR.

Check: Ambient Heat

Country: RSA/Germany

Genre: dreamy art rock

Label: Unique Records/Schubert Music

Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys - Transit Tapes (For Women Who Move Furniture Around) (2021)

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Theory of Ghosts - EP1 (2023)

piątek, 13 lutego 2026

Theory of Ghosts - The Sulphur and the Grey (2026)

For many reasons, Closure by Piano Magic was an album as important as it was devastating to listen to for me. It also crowned the band's discography in near perfect way, but still meant that there was a musical presence I would sorely miss. Fortunately, on Piano Magic's ashes, Theory of Ghosts rose and it shares a lot of common things with its predecessor. And the artists behind it have just released their debut album!

Theory of Ghosts is Glen Johnson and Franck Alba (of Piano Magic) who, together with Robert Hervais-Adelman, create something I would call minimal ghost rock. All the PM fans out there will quickly recognize the vocals (obviously) but also the lyrical flavour that, to me, a person from Central Europe, is so strikingly British. I love it and I love when they sing about UK and London (places I've never been to, let alone have any relationship with) but also about more universal aspects of life. "When nobody knows who you are, you can do whatever you want" being probably the sentence I will take with me from this one.

Music-wise, it's a minimal (but still very artistic) electronica that has a hint of this autumnal sadness I associate these vocals with. Especially when it's joined by subtle guitar sounds and strings. Sometimes the electronic part is even more... beepy. I know it's not a word, but listening to Blame makes me think of this word. Theory of Ghosts is a great name as it's like listening to a ghost of something that used to be, but also to something that is completely new in form.

The Sulphur and the Grey costs 9 EUR (7.99 GBP).

Check: When Nobody Knows Who You Are

Country: UK

Genre: minimal ghost rock

Label: Second Language Music

Hilary Woods - Birthmarks (2020)

piątek, 5 grudnia 2025

Hilary Woods - Night CRIÚ (2025)

Another female voice from Dublin this week, but it couldn't be more different than the energetic post-punk of SPRINTS. Five years after the fantastic Birthmarks, the ambient pop slash drone soundscapes artist Hilary Woods comes back with a surprising change in her music, shifting the style towards artistic slowcore sounds.

As the description of the album suggests, Woods focuses a lot on her voice here. But I can't say the vocals really feel like the main focus when they are joined by some beautiful instrumental slowcore-like instrumental sections. I can't NOT feel like the ambient/drone element was traded for the artsy and I quite appreciate it. The atmosphere doesn't change though: the music is as moody and intimate as ever, it's like listening to whispers of a loved one but there are also violins.

The description of the album says a lot of things, I'm not gonna try to understand the more contrived fragments, but I'm sure smarter people may find it inspiring. I will stick to the music as it feels strangely straight-forward, even when Woods is joined by a child choir (actually, I really like Taper), and artistically satisfying.

Night CRIÚ costs 9 USD.

Check: Taper

Country: Ireland

Genre: experimental pop

Label: Sacred Bones

czwartek, 4 grudnia 2025

Yndling - Time Time Time (I'm in the Palm of Your Hand) (2025)

A few months after this year's EP, Silje Espevik known as Yndling, released her sophomore album filled with the signature cute and dreamy pop music. She used the songs we already know and love and built an LP around them, making it one of the best dream pop albums of the second half of the year.

You can't help but smile when you hear Espevik's voice sounding like the summer evening sun touching your skin feels like. A bit dreamy, very melodic and soft. You don't need much more, it's enough to have hazy indie pop sounds around it and a perfect dream/indie pop music is being born. Especially that songs like Even if it's a Lie (I Don't Mind) and (especially!) As Fast As I Can are already imprinted onto my music mind since the June EP.

I like how the light and swift songs can, when it's necessary, be weighed down with some sweet guitar noise in the background, adding to the atmosphere and balancing the twee/tropical fragments (like in the trip-hop-esque title song) so well. The album is finished with two strong candidates for the best track at the album: the extremely catchy Falling Behind and the most artsy Some Things You Don't Get. There is a lot to choose from on this release, that's for sure.

Time Time Time (I'm in the Palm of Your Hand) costs 10 USD.

Check: As Fast As I Can

Country: Norway

Genre: soft dream pop

Label: Spirit Goth Records

środa, 9 kwietnia 2025

Postcards - Ripe (2025)

Ah, yes, after last week's Cats of Transnistria, there comes another common guest of this blog. I follow the Lebanese Postcards' career since their 2020's sophomore album and I'm never disappointed with what they cook in their artistic, lyrical minds. Last month they released their 5th album with the title suggesting that it is their final artistic form.

So what is this ripe fruit of their work? It is a melancholic and moody as ever, but I feel like the band shifted slightly their sound towards chamber rock (pop/singer-songwriter vocals and compositions accompanied by rock-like yet very moody guitars (Poison!) ) at the expense of the dreamy tones. Slight shift, there's still tons of the oneiric parts (like the beautiful ending of Wasteland Rose), but generally makes me think of how Lucy Kruger plays after Medicine Boy got disbanded. Nevertheless, the music is addressed to the sensitive audience just like it's been up to this point.

This thought is acknowledged by the band itself as the description of the album includes phrases like "[the band] transmute their rage into something transcendental" and "[the album] is as much a departure as it is a natural evolution for the band: rawer, darker, but with the same unflinching resolve". One has to also remember about the wherabouts of the artist's music: coming from Lebanon, it revolves around many hardships their land faces, which is reflected in the titles like Wasteland Rose, Ruins or Construction Site, in many places drawing comparison between the world in shambles and the reality of one's love life.

Ripe costs 10 USD.

Check: Wasteland Rose

Country: Lebanon

Genre: lyrical art rock

Label: Ruptured

Postcards - After the Fire, Before the End (2021)

Postcards - The Good Soldier (2020)

Cats of Transnistria - Aligning (2019)

czwartek, 3 kwietnia 2025

Cats of Transnistria - IV (2025)

POV: A band checks all your personal boxes to catch your interest. Having a great, unusual name; being from a beautiful and unusual place; and most importantly, creating magical music. No wonder that the Helsinki-based Cats of Transnistria have appeared on this blog many times already and it is safe to say that with every new album they will be featured here too.

Because the band's dream pop is how this should be done. And since it's been already 6 (!) years since their previous (and my favourite!) album, I had to post about IV. Henna Emilia Hietamäki and Tuomas Alatalo have a great ability of creating moody, intimate dreamy tracks that do not shy away from using lightly louder guitars as it is the case in very old-school rock like parts of Thunder as an Arrow (no wonder that the video to this track looks like taken from the 90s.). I appreciate that, but still my favourites are the songs that mesmerize with repetitive structure and airy atmosphere. Like Horrors, a beautiful little nightmare.

And so the dream finally comes to an end with the extremely airy Ceiling of Stars and one can only want to go back. The cosy, very artistic and drawing from other genres dream pop from Finland is quite addictive.

IV costs 7 EUR.

Check: Horrors

Country: Finland

Genre: art dream pop

Label: Soliti

Cats of Transnistria - Opium (2018)

Cats of Transnistria - Divine (2016)

środa, 5 marca 2025

Daydream Twins - Solstice for Embodiment (2025)

Ok, ok, hear me out: Daydream Twins' debut was one of the best shoegazey albums of 2022, their EP Bombinate was one of the best ones in 2023 and... now it's time for their sophomore LP called Solstice for Embodiment and, in my books, it's on the best way to become one of the best of the incoming year when it comes to airy but also very melodic shoegaze/dream pop vibes.

The unbelievable talent for writing catchy songs is what attracts me to the Texas duo in the first place. You can say that if it wasn't for the dreamy arrangements and off-stream vibes, the songs would be featured on your mainstream radio stations and national charts. But it's a great thing they are not: the pop hit-like melodies here are enchanted within the airy guitar and ethereal vocals-fueled compositions, meaning it's what we like the most. This ratio of the catchy and the dreamy seems to me perfectly balanced and perhaps it means that it can attract fans of very wide range of genres.

But if you ask me, the more airy, the better. That's why ballads like Aeromancy and Thousand Steps take the cake on the album.

Solstice for Embodiment costs 7 USD.

Check: Aeromancy

Country: Texas, US

Genre: ethereal pop

Miłosz Kędra - For Aeons (2022)

wtorek, 28 marca 2023

Bianca Scout - The Heart of the Anchoress (2023)

The London-based Bianca Scout has been making music for almost a decade now. This year she showed her new album called The Heart of the Anchoress and it makes perfect nutrition for the art-oriented parts of our souls.

Her music is certainly a kind of ambient pop, but unlike artists like Midwife, it is not based on grainy noise, but highly experimental electronica. Bianca Scout admits that her compositions have to be utterly transformed (twisted, teased, pruned and nurtured) from the way they look at the beginning to their final forms. The angelic voice of the artist is accompanied here by a variety of electronic sounds, artful instrumental bits and oneiric backing vocals. Everything resembles a very detailed collage of elements that alone don't mean much, but together are truly beautiful. Except for the pipe organ-based ones, they'd look fabulous alone as well, no doubt about it. No wonder that her tracks are called "mantra-like songs succeed in opening portals to heavenly vistas, where scenes of golden-hour/after-hour intimacy softly unfold".

The Heart of the Anchoress costs 8 EUR (7 GBP).

Check: Dedicated Two

Country: UK

Genre: art ambient pop

Label: First Terrace Records

wtorek, 14 lutego 2023

Antonina Car - Immersed Sensibilities (2022)

Just a couple of weeks ago I posted on this blog about the new EP by Miłosz Kędra. One of the best tracks here was his duo with Antonina Car and now I'm happy to write that this fairly unknown Polish violinist/cellist released her own debut album in December last year. It is called Immersed Sensibilities and shows fantastic ability to create very artsy and very moody music.

Although Car is a violinist, her music is far from being simply a violin music. This album is filled with experiment-fueled compositions that make use of piano sounds, electronic samples and variety of instruments like violin, baritone violin, cello, keyboards, and synthesizers. And also the artist's vocals as while making the album, she grew to perceive her own voice as one of the instruments she could use. Those vocals provide some kind of melodic music framework to some parts of the album, making them into the avant-garde art pop that is as beautiful as it is experimental. But it is clear to me that Car (whose name is closer to tsar than to an automobile if anyone's wondering) aims mostly towards creating a violin-led soundscape that is more intriguing and curiosity-sparking than only melancholic as her main instrument would suggest.

Immersed Sensibilities costs 4.5 EUR (21 PLN).

Check: Reveries

Country: Poland

Genre: experimental neoclassical

Label: Time Released Sound

poniedziałek, 6 lutego 2023

Fågelle - Den svenske vreden (2023)

It seems like Scandinavian countries are a limitless source of (usually female) artists who create music that is both exceptionally artsy and utterly atmospheric. Let's not waste space here on enlisting them, it's enough to say that Klara Andersson aka Fågelle is another one who is already well-known on the European music scene. This year she came back with her sophomore album called Den svenske vreden.

Although the title translates to "the Swedish anger", anger is not something the music itself conveys here. From the music perspective, it's more a melancholic, slightly dark kind of high-brow pop music that looks for new means of expression rather than choosing the easy ways to grab the attention of the audience. So it's less about the melodic music, it's more about employing such music items as "twisted field recordings, mobile memories, digital trash, dark electronics, and howling choirs while moving between harmony and noise" to create something memorable.

And this comes with Andersson's vocals that feel so very close to the audience, never hidden behind the music background, bringing tons of emotions to the table, although it doesn't feel like an over-the-top performance. They are quite surprisingly balanced at one point by the particularly male-deep vocals by Joakim Thåström in Kroppen, but otherwise it really feels like it's a party of one artist with all the attention drawn to her.

Den sveske vreden costs 7 EUR.

Check: Ingenting

Country: Sweden

Genre: dark electronic pop

Label: Medication Time Records

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wtorek, 29 listopada 2022

Orbel - Lur Hezea (2022)

The artists singing in Basque are getting present on this blog. After Arima from the Basque Country, it is time for the band from the northern side of the Pyrenees, Orbel. Coming from Bayonne, the musicians create something from the borders of darkwave and nightmarish dream pop and hey showed it on their second album called Lur Hezea.

The album's title translates to "wet soil" and it only strengthens the overall impression that there's tons from folk culture in the band's music. The ancient, ritualistic nature of their art took form that is close to the dark folk/darkwave blend that is fairly popular i various places in Europe. But the vibes here are certainly more artsy: the music is dark but also far from being simple, the compositions create tones of atmosphere but not in the easiest ways possible. The minimalist background electronica works in a fantastic way in this surroundings too. It's artsy darkness.

The band decided to switch their sound from post-rock/metal into what they call "oscillating between tribal rhythms and funeral introspections, like an ancient pagan ritual" and I ave to say that it seems to have been a really good decision. Especially when they incorporate some other genres into their tasty blend: like tribal folk in Irentsi or noisy backgrounds in Okerra.

Lur Hezea costs 10 EUR.

Check: Heriozko Giltza

Country: France

Genre: artsy darkwave

Label: Usopop Diskak

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Postcards - After the Fire, Before the End (2021)

czwartek, 10 listopada 2022

Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal - Snakeskin (2022)

This blog knows Julia Sabra as the vocalist of the Lebanese dream pop outfit Postcards. But she makes music under her own name too. Recently she joined forces with her compatriot, electronic/ambient music creator, Fadi Tabbal, in order to create a unique record called Snakeskin.

In their music, the artists combine Sabra's ultimately dreamy vocals and Tabbal's experimental electronica into non-obvious compositions. Already the first song here, Still Life, surprises the audience with crunchy samples that are everything but soothing to ears but yet, sounding very well together with Sabra's angelic voice. Later, the compositions get much more flow with the industrial flavours planted all around them. But really, this album is very difficult to attempt any kind of labeling with neoclassical ambient pieces like Past Tense, the unnervingly dark In Our Garden or the hazy dream of One by One. Practically speaking, each song is a different story with different vibes and emotions. And everything makes one whole glued together by the vocals and the melancholic aftertaste.

Snakeskin costs 8 USD.

Postcards - The Good Soldier (2020)

Check: One by One

Country: Lebanon

Genre: dreamy experimental pop

Label: Ruptured Records/Beacon Sound

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poniedziałek, 7 listopada 2022

Anna Arrobas - Made to Touch (2022)

Anna Arrobas, a Montreal-based artist, creates some hauntingly beautiful ballads that reside somewhere within the experimental art pop genre. Together with her band, the Canadian released her first album last month and it's a real deal of the moody,

The Opener in Heart of Stone makes a beautiful promise for this album to be as moody as it is emotional and, simply, beautiful. However, from my experience, many artists like opening their albums this way, as a sort of an ornament, and then proceed with more mainstream pop content. Not this time though, as Arrobas continues with her atmospheric, nearly ambient pop. She uses her soft voice, additionally dispersed in a very dream pop manner, to lead us through this nostalgic and gloomy art realm. There's no doubt that her slow-paced compositions are meant to be very much of the experimental nature. The accents are put on creating the eerie but also enchanting atmosphere, rather than being particularly catchy or melodic.

In this way, it is very ambient pop-like, there's, however, more to the instrumental side of the project. There's both guitar and synthesizer sounds, not to mention a guest accordion from time to time, but the music is still far from being overwhelming. The subtle backgrounds make it clear that in this art pop, art is more important than pop. And no song is a better example of this than the spoken word-filled Vœu that closes the album.

Made to Touch costs 7.5 EUR (10 CAD).

Check: Vœu

Country: Canada

Genre: dreamy art pop

Label: Éditions Appærent

środa, 5 października 2022

Future Conditional - Isotech (2022)

It was such a sad moment when the acclaimed ghost rockers of Piano Magic said their final good byes in a classy way by releasing their last album Closure in 2017. But luckily, the Glen Johnson and Cédric Pin duo makes for a real continuation of the band's legacy and they proved it again after 2018's dark The Burning Skull album.

The project is called Future Conditional, the album is called Isotech and it's clearly very different but also very familiar to any fan of the British band. While the music is definitely shifted towards minimalist electronica/synth kind of vibe, the vocals and, most importantly, the lyrics feel very ghost rock-like. The elephant in the room is most certainly Demolitions, the track that is filled with Piano Magic's urban-oriented melancholia and which, very literally, refers to The Last Engineer from PM's masterpiece Part Monster. I appreciate the musicians' urge to self-development and experimenting and as such, the album can be seen as a continuation of Piano Magic's discography with a sudden shift in style.

This style is seen as a futuristic (I'd say retro futuristic even) idea presented by Johnosn himsself when he said: “I had this idea….well, more of a hope, that, in the future, there might be clubs where androids go to dance and humans are banned". This coldwave-like take on club electronica surely can buy me too. Apart from the familiar faces, there's also a couple of guests on the album with Amanda Butterworth aka Mücha and Trembling Blue Stars' Bobby Wratten and Beth Arzy as the most prominent ones. And their melancholic vocals match the tone of the album perfectly.

Isotech costs 9.5 EUR (7.99 GBP).

Check: Demolitions

Country: UK

Genre: ghost synthpop

Label: Second Language Music

VLMV - Stranded, Not Lost (2018)

piątek, 16 września 2022

Motte - Cold + Liquid (2022)

Anita Clark, a violinist and composer from the New Zealand's town of Ōhinehou (known also as Lyttelton), is an artist with impressive CV that includes playing together with various kiwi projects (like Lawrance Arabia, The Phoenix Foundation or Nadia Reid) and making music for movies and dance performances. She also releases her solo albums, the newest of which is called Cold + Liquid.

She "borrows from an array of sound sources to create an immense entity, with each piece situated precisely along the path" as her Bandcamp website states. This eclectic approach to music results in an experimenting, highly artsy pop that is way closer to neoclassical and instrumental ambient genres than to anything else. Especially since Clark makes a good use of her main instrument - violin. Its sound is rarely melancholic as it's often the case, in here its sound is taken as far as possible into the experiment while still remaining extremely appealing for the audience. And very much towards the theatrical music/performance, it's very clear that the artist knows what this environment is all about.

Her FB doesn't lie, she's a real violin witch.

Cold + Liquid costs 7 USD.

Check: Cold + Liquid

Country: New Zealand

Genre: neoclassical art pop

Label: Ba Da Bing!

piątek, 2 września 2022

VLMV - Sing With Abandon (2022)

The Pete Lambrou-Ciaran Morahan duo appeared on this blog four years ago with their fantastically artsy album Stranded, Not Lost. I can safely say that their discography is one of the most consistently well-written music I know. And Sing With Abandon only proves this point.

The album starts like something Jónsi would do: heavy organ-like keys and high-pitched but very moody vocals on top of that. And just like him (and other artists of the higher music sensibility), the duo positions their moody ballads nest to ambient soundscapes that add to the album's magic. The piano keys and their beauty, the strings and their melancholic nature and finally the tear-jerking vocals blend into this dreamy art pop that generates sadness in the souls of everyone who tastes it. It's actually pretty surprising that this kind of music was written in London, not in Reykjavik or any other Icelandic magical town.

Also the fact that the album's main theme revolves around sea and ships, together with their dangerous and melancholic metaphorical capacity brings it thematically closer to the Far North. It has to be said that VLMV are so good at bringing everything that's breathtaking and tear-jerking from the concept of the sea and transform it into lyrics, like in The Navigator: "I came to map the sun and stars/ But I can't find them in the dark/ To navigate the ocean floor/ I can't hold my breath much more".

Sing With Abandon costs 12 EUR (10 GBP).

Check: The Navigator

Country: UK

Genre: neoclassical dreamy art pop

środa, 31 sierpnia 2022

Sun's Signature - Sun's Signature (2022)

This project managed to take the alternative music world by surprise: Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins and Echo & The Bunnymen and Spiritualized's drummer Damon Reece are a real life couple, but they decided to create something together in the music world as well. This EP is the result and it's as artsy and moody as could be imagined.

Fraser's theatrical voice and the music that balances between space rock, art pop and more experimental territories, together, bring this overwhelming feeling of higher art. And it doesn't matter if it's more about moody atmosphere in Underwater or about unassuming music fun in Golden Air. From Tori Amos- to Spiritualized-like, the music vibes here are taken from all over the place and it works. It does sound like music from a psychedelic, fairy-tale musical but it's only for the better. No wonder that it is being referred to as a "Alice in Wonderland journey through life and music" - everything checks: the weird, the psychedelic and the charming.

Sun's Signature costs 5 USD.

Check: Underwater

Country: UK

Genre: dreamy art pop

Label: Partisan Records

Ghostly Kisses - Never Let Me Go (2020)

wtorek, 14 czerwca 2022

Stella Star - Stella Star (2022)

After Strangers in My House, Stella Star is another dreamy band coming from Kraków. The Poles create music that is "bordering on shoegaze and dream pop" and finally showed some longer material on the debuting self-titled EP this spring.

Created in 2020 when the pandemics started to wreck havoc in the lives of people around the globe, the band was a kind of therapy for the artists to help them survive the difficult time. While their music clearly draws a lot from the dream pop genre, including the dense guitar-based compositions, the accents are put slightly differently here. Małgorzata Buracka's vocals are clearer than it's customary for the genre and the songs overall leaning more towards art pop with noisy components than full-on noise pop. Especially in the songs sung in Polish - perhaps it's my personal bias, but they seem to me to draw heavier from the Polish pop tradition.

Buracka's lyrics can be extremely moody, especially in my favourite song on the album, Beast from the East. "We are dancing in the storm/ With snow around/ With ice touching my skin/ I feel alive" make some of the most ethereal lines I heard recently. The Polish band proves that you don't have to be particularly noisy in order to achieve the same oneiric results other noise/dream pop projects do.

Stella Star costs 2.5 EUR (10 PLN).

Check: Beast from the East

Country: Poland

Genre: dreamy art pop

piątek, 11 lutego 2022

Ghostly Kisses - Heaven, Wait (2022)

After making me fall in love with her first album The City Holds My Heart and live gig in Poland and after a fantastic release Never Let Me Go, Margaux Sauvé and her band Ghostly Kisses is back with, what she calls her true debut album, Heaven, Wait. Her ghostly presence is felt perfectly all over it so I can't help but be awe-struck yet again.

But it has to be said that while her previous recordings were all about beautiful melodies and ghostly atmosphere, on Heaven, Wait, the artist flirts with (synth)pop music more openly. There's still a lot of her fantastically ethereal and dreamy vocals and a great deal of art-rich taste in creating compositions, but she doesn't shy away from faster pace and clear electronic beats in some places and also in general, the album feels catchier. As a result, we are presented with a high quality art pop that is both melodic, catchy and moody at the same time. Especially in the parts that rely heavily on the piano key sounds.

And it's only right that her music is all about love with its beautiful ("Cause everyday/ You’re on my mind/ In every way/ You’re in my heart from Heaven, Wait) and difficult sides (as in "Don't know why/ I could never make it alright/ Don't know why from Don't Know Why). Still, my very favourite song here is the one that reminds me the most of the previous releases as Clay can easily be among my favourites together with Never Let Me Go, The City Holds My Heart or Touch. This means I can't wait for Ghostly Kisses' Europe and Poland tour next spring even more now!

Heaven, Wait costs 8.5 EUR (7 GBP).

Ghostly Kisses - The City Holds My Heart EP (2018)

Check: Clay

Country: Canada

Genre: art dream pop

Label: Akira Records

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