Alt-pop noir twist and weaving the tale of Dark’s femme fatale character
After the recent release of her highly praised single ‘Villain’, Spanish/American multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Alexa Dark is back with her brand-new track ‘Fantasy Girl’ and her debut EP ‘Dark, Vol. 1’, which is out now.
Dark is inspired by a range of artists from 60s classics such as Nancy Sinatra to trip-hop band Portishead. The seven-track strong EP is enticingly Bond-like, pieced together with an alt-pop noir twist and weaving the tale of Dark’s femme fatale character. The EP takes the listener through a villain origin story, where Dark tells the tale of “giving into love, losing it all, and becoming the villain”. ‘Dark, Vol. 1’ was recorded in New York City with Matt Chiaravalle (Debbie Harry, Warren Zevon), and mastered by Emily Lazar (Beck, Haim) and Joe Lambert (Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen).
Through her musical artistry, Dark explores the darker side of her own femininity and how heartbreak has the ability to shape us into being something other than ‘the hero’ of our story. As she transforms into this villainess character, the enemy she most confronts is not the lover who betrayed her, but herself – the fantasy version of herself, who stifles her rage, her depth, and her darkness, shown through focus single ‘Fantasy Girl’ (“She’s the roses in Reno / The back of your mind / The show you wanna see / But you don’t see what’s behind”).
Dark said of the focus track: “‘Fantasy Girl’ confronts a secret third person in a relationship, one my partner is more in love with than me – but this third person is me, a version of me, a fantasy that can never be real. They are in love with the idea of me, and she’s becoming larger than life, consuming me until I am nothing.”
With tracks that would be at home on a James Bond soundtrack, Dark’s ethereal vocals and buttery lyricism envelop you throughout the 20-minute-long EP. “Throughout the seven songs, you dig deeper into this persona – her complexity, her depth, her darkness, what made her who she’s becoming…I wrote these songs at different stages of falling in love and navigating loss. You see what happens after the curtains close, after the happy ever after, and it isn’t a pretty story. In the wake of heartbreak, in the midst of reinvention (and with a taste for revenge), ‘Dark, Vol. 1’ was born,” Dark explained of the EP.
Raised between Barcelona, Munich, London, and NYC, Dark finds herself drawing inspiration from her multicultural upbringing and eclectic music taste (from Françoise Hardy to Portishead, to Nancy Sinatra and Arctic Monkeys), as well as her love for film noir and French New Wave cinema. She began writing her own songs and poetry in her early teenage years, quickly taking this to the stage, where she began performing live in London both solo with her acoustic guitar and in different bands, honing her artistic direction and arriving at her unique sound and presence.
Dark then moved to NYC, where she became part of the downtown live music scene and began working on recording new music with Chiaravalle, Lazar and Lambert. In artist development with AWAL, she has been releasing her noir alt-pop singles since the summer of 2021 and building her sonic and visual world, which has grown a cult following on TikTok, becoming a 60s, Bond-like, femme fatale soundtrack. Dark has also opened for Ghostly Kisses, NoSo, Julian LaMadrid, and more. With nearly 200,000 streams on her debut single, and features on Apple Music’s New In Rock, New in Alternative and New In Indie playlists, as well as publications Earmilk, When The Horn Blows, Atwood Magazine, she also appeared on Story+Rain’s ‘Her Life is Her Art’ alongside actress Sydney Sweeney and musician Rainsford. Dark’s authentic lyricism and distinctive musical production definitely make her an on-the-rise artist to closely watch.
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