Laveda describe their music as “rugged dream pop,” but though such a tag captures something of the spirit of the band, it also does a disservice to the polished sheen that also represents their sound. The Albany, New York duo of Ali Genevich and Jake Brooks have made a slick and energetic hit in ‘Dream. Sleep’, as if to prove this, a style like dream pop with the dials turned up, the rumbling guitar lines and punchy percussion joined by synth lines that wouldn’t be out of place in a catchy 80s favourite.
Despite this surface-level immediacy, the band say the song is about “being trapped somewhere you feel like you don’t belong,” and mixes feelings of excitement and possibility with doubt and regret. That this is perhaps something of a contradiction fits in with the Laveda aesthetic, eschewing as it does any commitment to simple binaries and instead straddling both sides of the the divide. Raw and lustrous, fuzzy and crystalline, nostalgic and fully focused on the future, careering forward without second thought.
Hey turn the lights off
and all the stars and
all the stars let them die
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Head to the Laveda Bandcamp page to download ‘Dream. Sleep.’