Rising star Doe Paoro hops through time on "Nostalgia"

“I wish you could see / your history is chaining you” she laments, her voice whispery and weightless. “Nostalgia” is wholly concerned with time and the inevitable byproduct of the way we experience it: memory. Two potential lovers repeatedly fumble with a harmful past while locked firmly in the present, unable to enter the future together.

It’s no surprise that an artist who speaks of her songs “in terms of colors and physical spaces” might skew more philosophical than your typical pop artist. In a recent string of releases, she’s explored Eastern ideas of cyclicality, and made good on her statement that “pop can be surprising, even uncomfortable.”

Those releases (“Growth/Decay”, “The Wind”, “Traveling”) were primarily ballads - spare, plaintive showcases for Paoro’s soulful voice. And though the ambition of the subject matter hasn’t changed here, the backdrop has. On “Nostalgia”, we’re treated to a propulsive synth that moves from vaguely sinister to saccharine with ease. They are two opposing tones sharing the same five-ish minutes, though never at the same moment. They, too, are subject to the confines of time, unable to spill over each other. Unlike Paoro and her lover, however, they’re all the better for it.