New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Toronto singer/songwriter/producer Nyssa premiered her latest single, "The Swans," yesterday via CLOUT, prior to its release today on all digital platforms. To celebrate, Nyssa has shared a video for the track and will perform tonight on the SPIN Twitch channel at 7pm ET/4pm PT. "The Swans" is featured on Nyssa's debut album, Girls Like Me, out August 21. Pre-save Girls Like Me here.
Discussing "The Swans," Nyssa states, "'The Swans' is a present day, apocalypse-era reply to Springsteen's 'Dancing In The Dark' or Bowie's 'Modern Love'. I wrote it before the pandemic, but in anticipation of the need to live above and against the fire and brimstone, to forever fall in love with the natural world. The forsaking of matrimony in "The Swans" is just another chain-cutting metaphor, another way of saying no to the trappings of the past and committing to a freer future. It's an anti-property love song directed at the entire experience of living."
Girls Like Me is a practice in double-entendre-in title and in play, in composition and performance. Nyssa is a hybrid artist, who doesn't believe in genre-constraints. The songs on Girls Like Me fall somewhere between folk and pop, country and electronic, punk and soul, dance-pop and power balladry, but that's not what defines them. Nyssa adds, "I consider the realm of popular music as one vast land. I believe in continuously connecting and following the through-lines. Each musical moment is informed by another, and as such, each of the songs on 'Girls Like Me' is purposefully in dialog with its past."
Nyssa has a great understanding of modern life. Her character-driven songwriting illuminates the big picture with its edges curling in from the heat of the flame. Her cross-genre, cross-decade approach to production-with its marriage of digital and analog, live sound and sampling-is uniquely captivating. Writing and performing music since she was 12 years old-cutting her teeth in the Toronto scene and befriending musicians of all ages and paths throughout her formative years. Between her loner childhood, musical obsessions, and over a decade waiting tables and people watching, she's cultivated a distinct lyrical voice and production style, seeking to tell stories that haven't been told and forge unique sonic pathways.
Nyssa's ferocious and energetic live presence, like some kind of "alternate universe hard rock disco Elvis" (DOMINIONATED), has garnered fans and praise both sides of the border, even leading NOW Magazine to include her in its annual "Sound of Toronto Right Now," 2020 feature.
Girls Like Me was written and produced by Nyssa in Toronto over the past year plus and includes contributions and performances from a number of local musicians including Zack Burgess (Kremlin, Gardenworld), Matthew Aldred (Modern Superstitions, Michael Rault), Carlyn Bezic (Ice Cream, Darlene Shrugg), Meg Remy (U.S. Girls), Jay Anderson (Badge Epogue Ensemble), Matt McClaren (Maylee Todd, Biblical), and Andy Scott. It was recorded at home, at Dreamhouse Studios, and at Palace Sound, engineered by Calvin Hartwick and Steve Chahley, mixed by Hartwick and Nyssa, and mastered by
Sarah Register.
The album's ten songs will serve as a true introduction to Nyssa, new patron saint of lost and lonely outcasts.
