We Speak Music

Zuko Sian Unveils New Single ‘Spill A Little Tea’

Published

3 months ago

January 7, 2026

“Spill a Little Tea” announces Zuko Sian as an artist unafraid of emotional vulnerability and sonic experimentation. At its heart, the track is a warm fusion of jazz, soul, and hip-hop, recorded in the intimate confines of her Bethnal Green home studio. From the delicate piano lines to the understated, groove-driven percussion, every element serves to frame Zuko’s voice in all its expressive richness. Her tone—deep, resonant, and tinged with a raw, emotional honesty—feels like a direct conversation with the listener, pulling you into her world before the first verse has ended.

The songwriting is as bold as the vocal delivery. Penned in just fifteen minutes following a personal conflict and breakup, the song captures the immediate clarity and courage that come with speaking one’s truth. Lines like “all I ever did was spill a little tea” are deceptively simple yet laden with defiance, highlighting the tension between societal expectations and personal integrity. It’s a track that doesn’t just tell a story—it insists that we reckon with the strength required to remain authentic in the face of judgment.

Production-wise, the song balances intimacy with cinematic ambition. The jazz-inflected chords and subtle hip-hop beats form a warm, inviting soundscape that never distracts from Zuko’s voice but rather amplifies its emotional resonance. There’s a sense of storytelling embedded in every note, making the song feel alive, immediate, and profoundly personal. The careful layering and texturing hint at the hands of experienced producers, yet the end result never feels overproduced—just heartfelt and compelling.

The visual accompaniment is nothing short of breathtaking. Jade Laurelle’s direction, paired with Bea da Gama’s cinematography, transforms the single into a living painting, inspired by The Execution of Lady Jane Grey. The attention to historical detail—costumes, lighting, even foam props—creates a surreal, immersive space where music and visual art converge. It’s a powerful extension of the song’s themes, turning Zuko Sian’s personal reckoning into a universal meditation on female empowerment, resilience, and artistic bravery.

“While Delaroche’s painting wasn’t feminist in a modern sense, it highlighted a woman destroyed by structures of male power,” Zuko explains. “That story still echoes today — in laws, in cultures, in daily life. Spill A Little Tea is my way of saying: we won’t be silent anymore.”

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We Speak Music

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

Published

20 hours ago

April 17, 2026

Don Reed

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 5^th 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.