Luna Shadows crafts a sonic homage to the unique experience of “Palm Springs”

It is a long tried and tested practice for artists of all mediums to find inspiration in their surroundings, a no doubt welcome side-step from music on a more humanoid presence. Read: less pressure, less scrutiny - a setting can’t get to precisely offended, after all.

It is something that clicked with Luna Shadows, and resulted in her dreamy new single “Palm Springs”, a sonic postcard to the classic Californian getaway. The follow up to this year’s earlier release “millennia”, this latest track captures the American dream of success, excess and leisure, albeit, via a less rose-tinted lens.

Conjuring echoing beats and sparsely pulsing rhythms, the track is decorated by distant guitar strings, creating an air of surreality in its near suffocating atmosphere. Hazy soundscapes and isolated visuals only exaggerate the sense of the uncanny, whilst the interweaving vocals of Luna Shadows and fellow Los Angeles-based artist In Drip are as oddly hollow as they are hypnotic.

"A born and raised New Yorker, I'll never forget the first time I went to Palm Springs,” recalls Luna Shadows. “I remember just staring at the sky obsessively, looking for a cloud and not being able to find a single one. Endless blue. I felt like I was roaming a bizarre film set in a time capsule - the sky, all the astroturf, the mid-century pools, the pastel houses, the vacant streets, and so forth.

“While the city's visual uniqueness has been well-documented in visual art, I'd never really heard of anyone capturing it sonically, at least not in the same way that we have an abundance of anthems for cities like N.Y or L.A,” she continues. “Yet it's such a memorable city, especially for music fans who grew up attending nearby festivals. Once a year, the streets of L.A empty out while masses make a pilgrimage to the desert. It's really a bizarre phenomenon that I find worthy of poetic documentation."