We Speak Music

Veronica D’Souza wants to ‘Fight For Love’ with infectious new single

Published

2 weeks ago

August 28, 2026

Don Reed

As she limbers up to release her highly anticipated debut album, fashion entrepreneur turned music producer Veronica D’Souza has unveiled another infectious taster of the record in the form of fierce alt-pop banger ‘Fight For Love’.

‘Fight For Love’ is about standing up. It’s a protest song with driving rhythms, insistent production and dance elements you can’t sit still to, aimed at tyranny, inequality and political apathy. With a powerful chanted chorus and a playful fusion of genres coming together, the track is a celebration of multi-culturalism and of the idea that we keep creating and uniting even as some voices try to force separation.

“In the last couple of years, we’ve seen an erosion of the foundation of human rights and international law, and a direct attack in the removal of funding, medicine and rights for minorities and women”, explains D’Souza. “Human rights are for everyone, they don’t have a colour or gender or nationality, and this song was written as a response to that, for us not to allow for this separation and to stand up to tyranny,” she further explains.

This is a message that D’Souza incorporates throughout her forthcoming debut album ‘My Only Army’, which is a refusal to conform and stands as a hope for multiplicity, curiosity and imagination. An extension of her work promoting women’s rights and her fight for social change, the album not only charts Veronica’s own personal journey from upheaval to recalibration but seeks to resonate with and empower others.

D’Souza built social enterprises before she built songs and the same instinct runs through both, a sense that the world is breaking and worth fighting for. A big presence on keynote stages, D’Souza leads conversations on the power of culture to create change in design, fashion and business. She was the founder of fashion label CARCEL, which made headlines in Vogue, i-D mag, The Huffington Post and made the cover of The New York Times globally for its innovative approach to empowering women in prisons with paid employment and education through luxurious and sustainable clothes. She also co-founded Ruby Cup, a social enterprise dedicated to providing sustainable menstrual products to women and girls in East Africa. She sits on several juries and is a board member of the Danish Design Council and most recently, she co-curated the symposium for the 2^nd biggest design festival in Europe, ‘3DaysOfDesign’, which featured names such as Paola Antonelli, Yinka Ilori and Alice Rawsthorne.

A smorgasbord of elements that D’Souza has brought together in her experiments with music production and from her Indian/East African/Danish upbringing and beyond, ‘Fight For Love’ is vibrant on the ear and delights in unpredictable flourishes as it turns resistance into something you can move to. It’s music that’s built on a choice: love over fear, community over powerlessness. As the song puts it, “We gotta be rebellious, fight the hate on spirit level / Choose light / And write ourselves alive.”

The release of ‘Fight For Love’ follows D’Souza being catapulted from her humble beginnings as a self-taught producer to world-wide acclaim as a hotly tipped new artist to watch, with major music tastemakers and highly regarded magazines like The Line Of Best Fit, Wonderland Magazine, NBHAP, Notion Magazine, TMRW Magazine, Noctis Mag, and Earmilk all jumping on board to praise her songs and to back her message.

We Speak Music

Phoebe June Traces Love, Distance and Heartbreak on New EP ‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’

Published

2 days ago

September 11, 2026

Joni Jones

For Phoebe June, some stories are easier to tell through music.

Her new EP, ‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’, is an intimate collection that traces the emotional journey of a relationship from the exhilaration of falling in love to distance, uncertainty, heartbreak and, ultimately, learning to let go.

Inspired by artists including Gracie Abrams, Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers, Phoebe June combines diary-like lyricism with melancholic ballads, subtle uptempo moments and an understated, emotionally honest production style.

At the centre of the project is ‘Thursday’, a bittersweet track about loving someone from a distance and holding onto the hope that the connection might survive.

Written after Phoebe left a country that held deep personal meaning, and left someone she cared about behind, the song looks back at the relationship from its beginning. Even its title is personal: the two first met on a Thursday.

The song captures the complicated feeling of walking away from something meaningful without believing that it necessarily has to be over. It’s about distance, memory and the possibility of finding your way back to someone, while recognising that hope only works when it goes both ways.

Across six tracks, the EP develops that story in sequence.

‘Everything You Are’ opens the project with the warmth of new love, while ‘Dead Sea’ explores the security of finding someone who helps you stay afloat through difficult times. As the story progresses, ‘Thursday’ introduces separation before ‘Getaway Car’ moves into the aftermath; unanswered questions, lingering attachment and the realisation that someone can profoundly affect your life while still being unhealthy for you.

‘One Day’ leaves the door open to the possibility of a future reunion, balancing hope with the understanding that some relationships may only exist in memory.

The EP closes with ‘Ophelia’, its emotional breaking point. Inspired in part by Friedrich Heyser’s painting of the same name, the track confronts the pain of feeling manipulated and unappreciated after giving everything to someone else.

The result is a project that deliberately moves from light to dark. Phoebe June considered not only the narrative but the emotional progression when sequencing the EP, allowing the brightness of its opening to gradually give way to the heartbreak of its closing moments.

Even the title reflects that feeling.

‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’ takes its name from a flower, with the image of a gate separating two people becoming a metaphor for a love that remains beautiful but just out of reach. To reach over it requires effort, just as maintaining a connection across distance, uncertainty and changing circumstances does.

Ultimately, Phoebe June isn’t interested in simply documenting her own heartbreak.

She wants listeners to recognise themselves in it.

‘Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate’ is a collection about love, nostalgia, hope and regret and about what remains when something beautiful ends up on the other side of the gate.