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Erin K releases new single ‘Keep Her’

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With a growing audience of over 3 million streams on Spotify, following the fruitful collaboration on 2019s I Need Sound, the American-born London-resident musician has continued her work with co-producer Kristofer Harris (Belle & Sebastian, Ghostpoet) and recorded new album Sink to Swim at his Squarehead Studios in Kent.

Erin’s narrative-driven songs are as forthright and personal as they are engaging and the candid nature of her often fearlessly self-deprecating lyrics make repeated listens of the timeless songs rewarding. None more so than Keep Her.  “This song illustrates the circumstances of a girl who is bound to her relationship with a controlling partner”, Erin says. “It is written almost in the form of an encouraging letter to the dominant party, offering advice on how to “keep her by [his] side so she can’t let go”. As the verses unfold, the extent to which this girl is broken and bound are poetically revealed.

This subject matter is intensely personal to Erin who “found myself in similar relationship dynamics in the past. It’s disturbing how reality can be so drastically altered in this way.

The song evolved considerably from its original form to the final studio recording. “Musically, it was interesting to witness the evolution of this song, originating as something very sombre and heavy. The arrangement is lighter now, serving as a nice contrast to the subject matter”.

The video for Keep Her was made in an unconventional way using cutting edge gaming technology.  Director Dylan Copeland explains, “Using camera trackers designed for gaming, and a hardware compositor designed for broadcast, we projected Erin and her guitar from our studio in London to a bench in a virtual clearing in a virtual forest in an Unreal Engine”.

Combined with traditional motion graphics, layered animations originating from Erin’s own illustrations and live performance, the result is beautiful and engaging and reflects the spirit of her signature combination of irony,  candour and wit. 

With sessions for BBC 6 Music, Radio 1 airplay and major commercial syncs for Google and LG her left-field songwriting is gradually reaching the wider audience that it deserves.

Erin K is touring with her band through Italy in March with UK & European dates to be announced. Her new album Sink to Swim will be released in June.

Tour dates:

09 March GERMI, Milano

10 March CARACOL, Pisa

11 March DELIRI, Sora

12 March MR ROLLY’S, Vitulazio

15 March MALTO GRADIMENTO, Reggio C.

16 March RETRONOUVEAU, Messina

17 March SONICA, Siracusa

18 March MUG, Comiso

19 March ZOOTV, Brucoli

20 March BOLAZZI, Palermo

22 March PADDY’S, Catanzaro Lido

24 March MERCATO NUOVO, Taranto

25 March PROVO CULT, San Giovanni Rotondo

26 March OFFICINA 72, Agropoli

28 March MARLA, Perugia

29 March FAT, Terni

30 March COCKNEY LONDON PUB, Correzzola

31 March AI PRETI, Verona

01 April ARCI DALLÒ, Castiglione delle Stiviere

We Speak Music

Michele Ducci teases new album with uplifting indie single ‘Woman Like You’

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Michele Ducci has unveiled the second single, ‘Woman Like You’, from his forthcoming album and animated film ‘Snail in the Clouds’.

‘Woman Like You’ pairs bright distorted electric guitar with an electronic drumbeat, adding in Ducci’s soulful vocals and a catchy uplifting chorus with Letizia Mandoleisi’s sweet vocal harmonies. A vintage organ pedalboard operated by Ducci simultaneously generates chords, bass and rhythm, like a one-man band. Shane Kennedy (Girl in the Year Above) joins in on guitar. Simon Milner (Is Tropical, Ysing) recorded and produced the track at his 4am Studios in London.

The album and film tell the story of a planet called ‘Snail’, inhabited by hybrids – primarily a mixture between scorpions, snails and humans – who lead a life according to the style of Pythagoras, devoted to music. There is also a cloud man named Agostos, a writer of musical operettas, who together with a talking smoke machine called Doctor Subtilis, begins to kill all hybrids, targeting in particular the hybrid musician Diodoros and his band, in an effort to steal the ark of melodies, an ancient ship that allows the whole planet to survive with music and joy.

The video for the single, created and animated by Ducci and Mandoleisi, delves further into the realm of planet ‘Snail’:

Says Ducci, “The ark of melodies, after various attempts, finally starts to work and fly in the planet Snail, while the shady Doc. Sub. and Agostos, with their platoon of soldiers made of foggy smoke, spy the miracle, planning to steal the ark for their evil and tyrannical purposes.


About the track, Michele says, I wrote this song for my love Letizia. Love seen from the mind is the sound we make. Sound is the love of matter.

We used a Technics synthesizer organ from a flea market. I tried to find a mood that was right for the song and I started using the bass of the pedal board together with the synth and the drums, and it was magical to hear the song reveal itself all coming from a single instrument. Leti was singing with me and we recorded everything live in one shot. Then we made Shane do the guitar flight, as if he came out of the window. The idea was to maintain disproportions, guitar thrust and synth drum thinness a la Haroumi Hosono, so as to create an estrangement, but naturally: it’s about how I listen, with close up something that captures me in its nuance as element of a larger orchestra somewhere. I’m glad we decided in the studio with Simon to use the layers of arrangement as the close-ups in the cinema; they look like strange enlargements that perch on parts of a mutated orchestra. I’m happy to come back with this love song at a time when everything seems to opt, even my labor in managing the flows of selfishness that have poured out on me while doing this album, for the sound of war. I’m here happy to be able to say that the sound of love always wins as did for me. Snail in the clouds is one of the most important works in my life and I am glad to start from pure love for this album that is my son.

The album and full-length film will be released on the 5th of June on Monotreme Records.

Michele and Letizia’s previous musical short film, ‘The Great Book of Nature’, is an official selection for the 2026 Venice Shorts Film Festival.

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