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Haley Bonar Joins darkDARK For A Sweet Electro-Pop Jam

darkDARK.
Courtesy of the artist
darkDARK.

"Restless" is one of 2017's first great songs: a dreamy, sweetly throbbing electro-pop jam with a warmly soaring, heartfelt vocal at its core. The latest single from darkDARK, a production duo based in LA and Austin, the track features some of the best ingredients around, from charming analog synths to the relentlessly pleasing voice of Haley Bonar.

As producers, darkDARK's Genevieve Vincent and Chris James craft an infectious track that's sturdy enough to support endless remixes and compact enough — at just three and a half minutes — to leave listeners wishing for more. "Restless" also provides an intriguing blueprint for Bonar, who usually travels on guitar-driven terrain but possesses a swoony, knowingly melancholy voice that's ideally suited to the dance floor.

"I wanted to tell a story along the lines of two young people who take the late train home from an insane night out and realize that they actually love each other and want to commit to one another, despite their restless pasts," Bonar writes via email. As for the music that surrounds her, Vincent and James add: "We wanted the beginning of the song to sound simple, like moonlight, when it starts off. But as the lyrics unfold, it breaks into this beat, opens up and really takes you somewhere unreal, heated and impulsive."

"Restless" appears on darkDARK's debut EP, Heathered, which comes out Feb. 24.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
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