With anticipated album releases from Tame Impala, Tennis, Nathaniel Rateliff, and others, February 14 is shaping up to be a fantastic New Music Friday. But perhaps our most anticipated Valentine’s Day release comes from Riki, the brainchild of Los Angeles-based visual artist and musician Niff Nawor, who offers up her debut LP.
The dark-pop project is the latest offering from Dais Records, and brings the brilliant label into 2020 with another propulsive invitation to shadowy dance floors and late-night affairs. We first got a taste of the magnetic Riki sound back in November, and this week she returns with the seductively coy “Earth Song,” a fidgety twirl around post-punk and darkwave’s ’80s inspirations that leaves us rather breathless.
It’s another studded notch in her debut album’s track listing, with lyricisms that unfold like a flower in bloom: “Realize truth lies in part of another / Moving lines in space and time, we feel it deep within each other / Love life in time, truth lies in another / In the air, part of the earth, the world is just a small part of it all.”
Absorb “Earth Song” and all its darkened shine via Spotify, or the track’s music video, directed by Amanda Siegel, with cinematography by Ben Turner.