CLOVES has undergone something of a transformation since releasing One Big Nothing in 2018. For starters, the stripped-back, folk-adjacent sound of her astonishing debut has been replaced with glitchy, nightmarish beats and she’s in a very different place mentally. Take “Dead,” the introduction to her much-anticipated sophomore set. “Intoxication takes motivation, what you doing with your generation,” the 24-year-old sings to herself. “Catch me as I fall, I’m crawling up the walls.”
It turns out, the song is about mental health. “Maybe this song should have a back-up name titled ‘Conversations With Myself,’” CLOVES reveals in the press release. “It journeys through anxiety and how that leads to self-depreciating actions. I was in a hard place in myself at the time, and I’m very aware that it sounds cliché but I genuinely found creating this track very cathartic; it not only felt like a way for me to express myself and get the heaviness out of my chest, but it also felt like the beginning of something, an opening foundation of an album.”
Watch CLOVES’ suitably dark “Dead” video below.