alt pop – Queen City Sounds and Art

Delachute and Madrid Exit (L-R), photo by Orhan Aydin

The music video for Madrid Exit’s “July” (featuring Delachute, courtesy videographer Orhan Aydin) is a little like watching a strange found footage horror short. The song itself his ethereal and hazy yet beat driven. A human figure (Madrid Exit) is in the first part of the video and when he walks off screen we see another with some kind of white mask and what looks like a baseball bat (this is Delachute in the usual garb). Both are walking along a path flanked by lush greenery and the song with elements of background drone and slow, heavy processed percussion is simultaneously haunting and soothing. Think pop music for a Curry Baker film. Watch the video for “July” on YouTube and follow Madrid Exit at the links below. Look out for his debut album out in Fall 2026.

Madrid Exit on Instagram

The title of Girl Wilde’s “if love skips this lifetime, i’ll die in my room” is appropriately melodramatic. It expresses the moment of aching, soul deep collapse of the psyche in reaction to unfulfilled yearnings, perhaps spurred by imagined or actual rejection, and the searing and gutting disappointment that can hit you hard when it feels like you had built up real feelings for someone that you felt were reciprocated only to find out that for whatever reason the situation wasn’t what you were hoping, to the point of belief, it would be. And the crashout into conviction that it’s never going to happen for you with enduring overwhelming feeling that you’re someone who is just going to give up until the next great, cosmic go around. The song is awash in afterglow melodies, stuttered and staggered, glitchy rhythms, vocals that are hushed and poignantly melancholically exhausted and at times processed into auto-tuned disassociation. It’s the kind of sound that makes sense when you’re trying to really feel out the moment in all its painful manifestations all at once to get through this moment you know will end but feels like it never will. Listen to “if love skips this lifetime, i’ll die in my room” on Spotify and follow Girl Wilde at the links provided.