Lila Drew takes us through a wormhole to 1968 Los Angeles in "Lila's Theme"

Many of the great pop artists of the 60s and 70s never graduated high school, but one of today’s best, Lila Drew, is an Ivy Leaguer with wide-ranging interests in literature and spirituality.

Drew’s new single "Lila’s Theme" more than lives up to the ethereal and hypnotic space she has established. The music has the spare, dream-like quality of Frank Ocean’s “Nikes”, and the video (shot by acclaimed filmmaker Vincent Haycock) is easily one of the year’s best. Haycock has previously worked with icons like Leonard Cohen and Paul McCartney and he brings the song’s wistful themes to life by deftly shooting both human and anime interactions.

Drew's artistic flair in this track is indebted to New Journalism legend Joan Didion, one of the most influential L.A. voices of the sixties. "Lila’s Theme" lyrics take us back to the days when The Doors and other artists beat a path to Joan’s door in Malibu, “And you remembered ’68, LA Times, The Doors on the other line.”

“A lot of "Lila’s Theme" is about Joan Didion’s essay The White Album,” says Drew. “She talks about 1968 in Los Angeles in such a poignant and unromantic way. And she was the first woman I’d ever read who talked about mental health with such honesty. I just love her work so much and it’s inspired a lot of my music and my non-music writing. I was thinking a lot about how communication was just so vastly different in the time she was writing ‘The White Album’ versus the time I was writing "Lila’s Theme". How our relationships have changed so much because of the changes in communication. That’s what "Lila’s Theme" is all about, and a really central theme to a lot of the songs I’ve written.”