With Halloween around the corner, newcomer CLOVES is dishing out the perfect hit to accompany us this fright night with new single “Dead”. Debuting slow sensual melodies led by the singer’s captivating vocals, CLOVES’ latest tune sees the singer go all out, transporting us to a dark and seductive world. Known for her honest and raw lyricism, the singer opens up on her journey with anxiety in the tune and how it lead to self-deprecating action.

With the video dropping alongside the tune, the singer opened up about the release stating, “This video represents the isolation, exhaustion and repetition that anxiety creates. It can feel like an over-functioning game in your mind. The video travels through the game ‘levels’ and barriers that your mind creates, only to end up right back where you started…”

With her latest single offering as a taste of what is to come from her conceptual sophomore album, we sat down with the singer talking conveying a powerful message, what we can expect from the album and how she is gearing up for some live performances…

Check out the interview below…

How has lockdown been treating you? How has it impacted your music and creativity?
I’ve been up and down throughout lockdown, at the start, I saw it as an opportunity to be creative so I set up a studio in my room and was making snippets of ideas and trying to keep myself feeling like I had some structure to the day, but after like a month or so I found it tbh mentally draining, it also had a big impact on me releasing, I had the option of either making green screen videos at home for the album or waiting until we were able to safely socially distance a shoot, I had always imagined visually that this album was going to be set in a world in my mind and be very set design-focused, the concept for the record centres around mental health and the complexities and layers of it, so in the same way that anxiety can lie to you when your really going through it I wanted my visual world to reflect that, so I choose to wait.

Where are you from and how has this influenced you sonically?
I grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and been living in London for the last 5 years or so, it’s hard to say how its influenced me sonically just because I feel music is so global, I take inspo from everywhere, I do love a bit of flume though, what a vibe of a project.

Where are the most unusual places you pull musical inspiration from?
I think a lot about mood, colour and texture when writing, it’s curating a feeling and for that to happen you gotta think about it from all angles, what does the scene look like? Where is this happening? What does it fucking smell like there haha creating a full sensory space so when someone hears the song it teleports them right to that place and how you feel, so I guess when I’m writing I’m thinking about all kind’s of weird shit, literally anything I’ve consumed from a meme I saw scrolling to trying to find the poignant texture to explain what it feels like when your fucking down as fuck in your mind, everything I’ve seen, heard, consumed and felt then thread it all together to create a fully formed perspective/mood, I guess that’s life though, the way everyone feels about everything is based on their experiences.

Congratulations on your new single “Dead” – which you tackle anxiety on – why did you call it “Dead”?
I think sometimes when you feel really low you don’t have the energy to overly explain yourself so I felt like it was fitting in that way, I liked the bluntness and it well represented how I felt.

Do you have a favourite lyric – something you think will resonate deeply with your listeners?
“Relaxation is strangulation, my minds been fucked mental fornication” this is my favourite, to me, it’s said in a very jaw locked laugh through your pain away, when and Coffee and I wrote this line we laughed for like an hour

And the music video is this trippy video game simulation – what does it represent and what did you want to convey with it?
I wanted the video to convey the isolation, exhaustion and repetition that anxiety creates, it can feel like an over-functioning game in your mind, so I wanted to travel through my worlds game, each ‘level’ has a visual cue representing what those barriers in your mind feel like, only to end up right back where I started, a cycle that can be really difficult to break.

And it’s taken from your forthcoming sophomore album – what can you tell us about it? What unites the tracks as a body of work?
It’s a conceptual record set in a synthetic, dystopian ‘world’ in my mind, each song is a mood/feeling/texture under the umbrella of what it is to be struggling with the complexities and layers of your mental health. Dead was the first ‘feeling’ diving into how anxiety and depression can lead to self-deprecating actions.

Much of your messaging is really empowering – how do you want fans to feel when they listen to your music?
I want them to feel understood for there individual complexities, that they don’t have to have life all figured out right now, that their mental health is layered, heard and important and that being themselves is valuable.

What’s next for you? What are you looking forward to in 2020?
More music coming out, shooting some live performance videos, I feel like I’ve lifted my weight of perfectionism over the last two years, I don’t wanna be perfect anymore, I just wanna express myself in the present and make cool shit.