The bedroom folk artist weaves a VHS fairytale of love’s beautiful, apocalyptic spark.
Emerging from the “aspen-yellow mountains of Utah” with a sound as intimate as a secret shared in a quiet room, Hazelmead is the quintessential modern bedroom folk artist.
Her music feels like a cherished, hand-written journal; it’s homespun, deeply personal, and stained with the ink of raw emotion.
As an Australian-American artist, she blends a worldly wistfulness with the hyper-specific nostalgia of someone who grew up on a diet of VHS tapes and daydreams.
Her previous work, from the haunting debut ‘esoteric’ to the self-aware ‘Cherry Pie,’ has meticulously built a sonic world where fairytale vocals meet haunting, melancholic undertones.
She isn’t just singing songs; she’s screening the films behind her eyes for anyone willing to watch.
Her latest single, ‘Enchanted,’ is perhaps her most captivating feature yet. True to its name, the song is less a mere composition and more a potent incantation.
It captures that specific, dizzying moment at the beginning of a romance that feels both star-struck and strangely apocalyptic, a collision of infinite possibility and the terrifying fragility of it all.
You can feel the 80s rom-com influence in its whimsical, daydream-like melody, but Hazelmead’s signature haunting touch ensures it never veers into pure saccharine. This is a love song viewed through a slightly cracked, albeit beautiful, lens.
The production, ever self-crafted, feels like a warm, slightly distorted memory. One can almost hear the gentle whir of a VHS player in the background, its tracking slightly off, lending the track a timeless, burned-in quality.
Her voice, a clear and poetic instrument, floats above the arrangement, simultaneously conveying breathless wonder and a deep, intuitive anxiety.
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‘Enchanted’ perfectly encapsulates that paradox of new love: the desperate hope that this spark becomes a flame, paired with the terrifying knowledge of how easily it could be extinguished.
It’s a spell cast in a minor key, a beautiful and devastatingly accurate portrait of hope and heartache existing in a single, breathtaking moment.
It solidifies Hazelmead not just as a promising new voice, but as a vital chronicler of love’s most beautifully complicated feelings.
