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it’s fascinating what seeds might be fortuitously sown after
dark. After meeting at a party in Paris while freestyle rapping, the French band, KLON, decided to take seriously their unique chemistry, and immediately started their project, steering its energy toward alternative pop. The seven members—Aurel, Art, Zoé, Akra, Rory, Nejma, and Vic—now all live together to focus on making music.
KLON’s latest single, “Santa Barbara”, was written in the group’s garage and was conceptualized and created just like everything else the band does—collectively. “We wrote it in
our studio, which is in our garage in the basement,” says Akra, singer and bassist. “And so at this time, it was a very creepy place, because it was not finished yet. It was a very dirty and dark place. And we came up with ‘Santa Barbara’, which is very sunny. So it’s like, we wanted to create something for ourselves, to feel this joy.”
The song is inspired by the soap opera, Santa Barbara, which ran from the early 80s to the early 90s and revolved
around a wealthy family and an ongo- ing murder mystery. KLON’s goal was to write about how the clichéd Amer- ican Dream isn’t always what it seems. Directed by Aube Perrie, and further inspired by Gregg Araki’s film Smiley Face, the music video follows the band
on a sunny day at the beach, where smileys set the stage, weed copiously flows, and eyeliner or piercings are the only requisite swimwear.
“Santa Barbara” will feature on KLON’s
forthcoming EP, Nouveau Genre, out in mid-
June. The band desired to release a record
that would reflect their diversity—seven
tracks for its seven members, with anti-cate-
gorical arrangements. “It means new gender,” says Rory, guitarist and singer, “but it’s more about a new gender of people. A new gender of thinking and of music, like maybe something really free with no boxes. Like, ‘I’m not this’, ‘I’m not that’, ‘I’m just what I want’. And that’s why we made the EP, which is super eclectic, with a lot of different inspirations and a lot of different tracks.”
It’s this eclecticism and progressive attitude that makes
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