Sasha and the Valentines, Felt Out, Croix
Faithful to their name, Sasha and the Valentines have written a record about love.
On their debut LP, So You Think You Found Love? (out via Oof Records on April 16, 2021), the promising young band has written the soundtrack to your next romance, capable of giving you the curly-phone-cord, calling-your-crush-for-the-first-time kind of butterflies. It follows the release of their 2019 EP, Green, and 2020 single “Tears for Mars”—a song that reflects on the parallels between a toxic relationship and that of ours with the Earth. So You Think You Found Love? is a record that is as spectacularly iridescent as an oil spill on asphalt, while being equally as grounded, real, and brutally of consequence.
So You Think You Found Love? is a billet-doux to past entanglements and past selves with a brashness in its honesty about relational dynamics and the fear of being alone—this playing into and surpassing the lushness and grandeur of their indie-kitsch genre. Their sound evokes a lot of things—a Brill Building pop sensibility, synthesizers from a 1980s soundtrack, the contemporaries of Tennis or UMO or Beach House—but it does so in a way that creates spaces of comfort and of knownness.
In the two years since So You Think You Found Love? was released, the band has been busy. In 2022 they returned to the stage on independently-booked tours in May and October around the United States, selling out dates in Boston and playing to over 100 attendees in Austin and Chicago. One of their October tour dates was performing for the first time at a festival at the Circuit of the Americas for the 2022 Formula 1 Grand Prix. Their song, “Witches”, has been used in recent Patagonia ads. On Spotify, the songs from So You Think You Found Love? have been streamed close to a million times; on Apple Music, almost a hundred thousand times. It’s clear that Sasha & the Valentines have their heart set on winning you over with their debut, and that’s exactly what they’ll do.
Felt Out is the alt pop duo and creative brainchild of Sowmya Somanath and Walter Nichols. On its face, Felt Out presents pop songs with a multicolored skeleton of synths, wind instruments, driving beats, guitar, lush vocals, and whatever else the two stumble upon. Underneath, it’s the culmination of a decade-long friendship; it’s the documenting of a search that doesn’t end.
Formed in 2016, Felt Out (formerly “Emme”) wasted no time becoming a staple of the Austin, TX music scene, culminating in three official SXSW appearances and the release of their debut LP ‘Superfluid’, garnering 33,000 Spotify streams and radio play at KUTX, KOOP, and 101X in Austin, and KEXP in Seattle among others. The duo’s thunderous sophomore LP ‘Until I’m Light’ is set for release on 4/14/23.