This unblessed 2025 may have come and gone without a traditional Song of the Summer (sorry, Sabrina), but Wyldest is ensuring the Post-Apocalyptic Pop Song of the Summer sweepstakes are in full bloom. And perhaps the winning entry comes from the London project of Zoë Mead, who delivers a lucid alt-indie lullaby called “After The Ending,” which dances in our headspace with delicate ease and heavy grandeur, reflecting how DIY guitar-pop used to sound in the age just before streaming.
Affecting and inspired, “After The Ending” surfaced yesterday (August 20), and will be on Wyldest’s forthcoming album The Universe is Loading, out November 14 via Hand In Hive and thematically scanning a landscape inspired by sci-fi, gothic horror and romance, and our natural world’s ability to adapt and endure.
“‘After the Ending’ is a post-apocalyptic pop song,” Wyldest says, “about sustaining love from one existence to the next; ‘The moment, we lost it / So I’ll find you, after the ending’. It was written with space and time in mind — a scenario whereby a relationship can’t exist in the present reality, perhaps due to life circumstances, timing, or something more extreme, like separation by death — and the promise of finding each other in a different existence where they can be there together.”
She continues: “It’s very much influenced by surrealist films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Big Fish, and The Matrix — where the protagonists break earthly, physical laws, cross through parallel universes or simulations to save or be with someone they love. Ultimately the song is about working through adversity to find love, and to fight to keep it alive.”
That’s a worthy cause no matter the season.