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Highclouds

@highcloudsmag

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A music blog with a soft spot for the dreamy, ethereal, surreal and forward-thinking. Left-of-center pop, indie, and beyond.

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Four years ago today, Caroline Polachek released “Sunset,” taken from her second solo album, Desire, I Want to Turn Into You.

Caroline began writing it with Sega Bodega in London in 2020, after he came up with a guitar loop that sounded a bit like flamenco. They decided to take that idea further, while Caroline also drew inspiration from Ennio Morricone’s sweeping spaghetti Western soundtracks. Then life took an unexpected turn: a visa issue forced her to leave the UK, so she and Sega continued working on the song in Barcelona, the very place its sound had somehow been pointing toward.

It was summer 2021, and the city was coming back to life after lockdown. Caroline remembered packed restaurants, people dressing up, dancing and staying out all night. She later said she wanted “Sunset” to feel red, like the Barcelona she experienced that summer.

Behind its warm guitars and soaring, wordless chorus is a song about finding comfort in love when everything else feels disappointing.

Caroline also filmed the video in Barcelona, directing it with her partner and longtime collaborator Matt Copson. It follows her through the city’s streets, beaches and rooftops, with a cameo from Sega and a funny moment where she types endless “oooos” on her phone, poking fun at her own vocal runs.

It remains one of our favourite songs of hers. by @highcloudsmag

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11 years ago today, Neon Indian released VEGA INTL. Night School, one of our favourite albums of 2015.

In 2012, after a show in New York, Alan Palomo went partying, came home at sunrise, couldn’t get into his apartment, and fell asleep on the front steps. When he woke up, his laptop was gone, along with nearly two years of unfinished music. Rather than try to recreate it all, he started over. One song did make it back: “Street Level,” which he painstakingly reconstructed after discovering an old YouTube upload of a DJ set where he’d played the demo.

Later, Palomo’s brother Jorge was working as a musician aboard a Caribbean cruise ship, so Alan joined him with an engineer and turned their cabin into a studio. With just one power outlet, constant seasickness, and a supply of tequila, they worked on tracks including “Annie” and “Slumlord.”

Originally intended as a record for Palomo’s dance project VEGA, the music eventually merged with Neon Indian’s hazy psychedelia. Its title refers to the strange education of nightlife: watching people flirt, reinvent themselves, get rejected, and stumble through the early hours.

Inspired by disco, funk, and sleazy old New York films, Night School turned those experiences into a wonderfully chaotic world. There’s even a mysterious recording from an Italian disco party tucked into the end of “Slumlord.” by @highcloudsmag

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7 hours ago

11 years ago today, Chairlift released the video for “Ch-Ching,” the infectious first single from what would become their final album, Moth.

The song creation started with Patrick Wimberly tapping rhythms on his living room coffee table, trying to fit different grooves together to capture the chaotic energy of New York. An early version was already being performed in 2013, but the track kept evolving, with producer Robin Hannibal eventually helping the duo strip away unnecessary sections.

The mysterious numbers, “27-99-23” were the actual combination to the lock at Chairlift’s Brooklyn studio. Caroline Polachek needed some numbers for the lyrics and simply borrowed the ones nearby.

Despite its title, “Ch-Ching” isn’t really about money. It’s about those moments when an incredible opportunity suddenly falls into your lap and you try to act normal while your adrenaline goes through the roof.

For the video, Caroline initially explored traditional Chinese dance and Bollywood choreography before discovering Jamaican dancehall choreographer Korie Genius online. He created the routine, which she spent ten exhausting days rehearsing. Dressed in bright orange outfits inspired by construction workers, the duo took over industrial locations and bridges around New York and turned the city itself into a colorful playground. by @highcloudsmag

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9 hours ago

11 years ago today, Beach House released Thank Your Lucky Stars, just seven weeks after Depression Cherry.

It wasn’t a collection of leftovers. Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally had written another batch of songs, and they felt these belonged to a separate, darker album.
They wanted to release it without the usual months of promotion. But someone nearly spoiled the surprise.

On October 6, 2015, a fan browsing the Depression Cherry website stumbled upon mysterious lyrics and images linked to unheard songs. They shared the discovery on Reddit, where other fans began piecing together the clues. Stranger still, the title Thank Your Lucky Stars had been hiding in the runout grooves of Depression Cherry vinyl all along. The pages disappeared, but the next day Beach House announced the new album, due out just nine days later.

While visiting her mother’s house, Victoria found an old photograph of a girl holding a doll. She barely recognised her own mother in it. The picture was almost perfectly square, she and Alex immediately knew it belonged to the record, and it became the artwork.

Beneath its hazy melodies, the album explores femininity, troubled relationships and abuse. Victoria later described Depression Cherry as the elegant older sister, while Thank Your Lucky Stars was the rebellious younger one who smoked cigarettes and didn’t care what anyone thought.

What’s your favourite song from it? by @highcloudsmag

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11 hours ago

15 years ago today, Lana Del Rey released “Video Games” as a single.

Lana wrote the song when she’d almost given up on becoming a successful musician. She was spending quiet evenings with her boyfriend, watching him play video games, and finding happiness in that ordinary routine. Although so many people heard heartbreak in the song, she initially considered it a happy one, about being content with someone you love.

She wrote it with Justin Parker, whose piano chords became the foundation of the track. Producers Robopop then slowed it down to a dreamy 60 BPM, adding cinematic strings and harps created largely with software instruments. They intended to polish the recording further, but the rough mix had something they couldn’t quite recreate.

The video was homemade, too. Lana filmed herself singing on her MacBook at her sister Chuck’s apartment, then pieced together old cartoons, skateboard footage, Hollywood imagery and paparazzi clips, including footage of Paz de la Huerta stumbling outside the Chateau Marmont. She and Chuck assembled it all at home.

Interestingly, Lana hadn’t even planned to release “Video Games” as a single. But The Weeknd kept sharing the video on Tumblr, BBC Radio 1 picked it up, and suddenly the labels that had previously ignored her were interested.

In the end, a song about finding peace in an ordinary life ended up taking that anonymity away from her forever. by @highcloudsmag

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13 hours ago

One year ago today, Balming Tiger and Yaeji released “wo ai ni,” a wonderfully warm declaration of love sung in Korean, English, and Mandarin.

The friendship behind the song goes back to 2020, when members of the Seoul collective showed up at Yaeji’s studio with a cake. They already admired each other’s music, but it took another four years for them to start collaborating. Over the following year, they travelled between Seoul and New York, shared meals, explored old audio shops, and watched the spring rain from Yaeji’s Brooklyn studio. All those moments eventually found their way into the music.

“wo ai ni” means “I love you” in Mandarin, but this isn’t your classic romantic love song. It’s about friendship, family, and all the different ways we care for one another.

For the video, directed by Jan’Qui, fans were invited to what they thought was a simple reaction video shoot. Instead, Balming Tiger members suddenly burst into the room to surprise them, with hugs, dancing, and plenty of laughter. Towards the end, the artists were also caught off guard when their own loved ones showed up to surprise them. by @highcloudsmag

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15 hours ago

2 years ago today, Oklou released ”harvest sky”, featuring underscores. We named it our best song of 2024.

The song grew out of Oklou’s childhood in rural France, where summer celebrations meant bonfires, traditional dancing and entire villages gathering late into the night. There was something magical about those evenings, but also something unsettling, with adults getting carried away and the festivities occasionally descending into chaos.

Oklou was especially fascinated by the sound of a party in the distance. She loved knowing people were having fun somewhere, without necessarily wanting to join them.

That feeling helps explain how ”harvest sky” took shape. Its melodies recall the traditional folk music she grew up with, while its trance-inspired production turns those memories into something euphoric. Yet beneath all that excitement, there’s a sense of loneliness, of watching everyone celebrate from the outside.

American musician underscores, whom Oklou greatly admired but hadn’t even met in person, immediately connected with that idea. Alongside Danny L Harle and Casey MQ, they created a song that feels like an ancient ritual and a futuristic rave at once.

Ironically, this song about keeping your distance from a party eventually became one of Oklou’s biggest live anthems. She even jokingly called it her ”stadium anthem”.

This footage comes from her March 2025 show at La Cigale in Paris. by @highcloudsmag

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5 years ago today, PinkPantheress released her debut mixtape to hell with it, 10 songs squeezed into just 18 minutes.

Only months earlier, she was a university student making tiny song snippets in her spare time. She’d post 15 seconds on TikTok, then finish the track only if people wanted more. When 30 people used “Pain”, she was thrilled. Soon “Break It Off” was everywhere, even though her friends didn’t initially know she was making music. One eventually recognised her voice in a TikTok shared to their WhatsApp group.

The mixtape brought together her teenage obsessions: Sweet Female Attitude’s UK garage, Adam F’s drum and bass, even Linkin Park’s “Forgotten”, which she sampled for “Last Valentines”. Beneath those bright, restless beats, she sang about heartbreak, jealousy and obsession. Most of the stories were invented, but “Nineteen” was different. It captured how scared she’d been to admit she wanted to abandon her university course and pursue music.

During a FaceTime call, a friend suggested the title ‘to hell with it’, a phrase they always used. PinkPantheress loved how it suited the record’s dark mood.

What’s your favourite track on the project? For us, it’s probably ”Just For Me”. by @highcloudsmag

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11 years ago, SOPHIE released “Just Like We Never Said Goodbye”, a highlight from her 2015 singles collection PRODUCT.

By then, SOPHIE was turning pop inside out with the rubbery squeaks, metallic crashes and hyperreal textures of “BIPP”, “Lemonade” and “Hard”. But this time, she did something almost disarmingly simple. She told a love story about two people who knew each other at sixteen and unexpectedly reconnect years later, only to find their old feelings rushing back.

Marcella Dvsi, who had also sung on “BIPP”, provides the vocals, while SOPHIE builds the whole thing around enormous, gleaming synths. There’s no proper drum beat. No big drop, either. Yet somehow, every swelling chord makes it feel like one of the most euphoric pop songs in the world, and one of the saddest.

SOPHIE placed it at the very end of PRODUCT, right after the harsh, chaotic “L.O.V.E.”. After all that futuristic noise, the record closes on an almost painfully human thought: what if you could pick up exactly where you left off?

We fell for it immediately and, obviously, ranked it No. 2 on our list of favourite songs of 2015. Since SOPHIE’s passing, the idea of seeing someone again and feeling as though no time has passed carries a different kind of weight. But that incredible rush of joy is still there, every single time. by @highcloudsmag

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🤯 by @highcloudsmag

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5 years ago today, Sassy 009 released “Red Plum”, a song taken from her Heart Ego mixtape.

Norwegian musician Sunniva Lindgård came up with the idea while reflecting on her complicated relationship with her phone. She felt this constant urge to know what everyone was doing, yet found herself increasingly uncomfortable watching people share their suffering online. That tension between curiosity, empathy and emotional exhaustion became the heart of “Red Plum”.

The song was part of a project that began taking shape during the winter of 2019–2020 in her mother’s apartment. She later reworked the material at Luft Studio with her friend and collaborator Baya, abandoning many of the original ideas along the way. The result was a wonderfully unpredictable collection of songs that refused to stick to any particular genre.

“Red Plum” captures that adventurous spirit. What begins as a restless, atmospheric electronic track eventually erupts into an extravagant electric guitar solo that seems to come out of nowhere.

For the music video, Sunniva teamed up with filmmaker Maria Hilde, taking an active role in creating the visuals herself. It’s interesting how a song inspired by our complicated relationship with digital life ended up giving birth to such an imaginative audiovisual project. by @highcloudsmag

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6 years ago today, Ultraflex released “Full of Lust”, taken from their debut album Visions of Ultraflex.

The duo, made up of Norwegian musician Kari Jahnsen (Farao) and Icelandic artist Katrín Helga Andrésdóttir (Special-K), had been experimenting with an electronic reinterpretation of “Sure Sivert”, a Norwegian children’s song by Maj Britt Andersen. They loved the original melody so much that they eventually incorporated it into “Full of Lust”, with Andersen’s permission. You can hear it in the synth solo towards the end.

But getting the song right was surprisingly difficult. Ultraflex spent ages rewriting the chorus, changing the lyrics and experimenting with different vocal styles, from punk and rap to the exaggeratedly seductive delivery we hear in the final version.

For the music video, they teamed up with fellow musician Okay Kaya, who directed a wonderfully absurd game of squash at their actual local gym in Berlin, Squash 2000. Between the suggestive movements, synchronised choreography and the two musicians sharing a single racket, the whole thing feels like an erotic fitness tutorial from another dimension.

That ridiculous combination of sexuality, deadpan humour and 1980s nostalgia was exactly what made Ultraflex so... ultra. Their aesthetic was partly inspired by old Soviet aerobics videos, and they loved playing with the fine line between seduction and parody. by @highcloudsmag

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