Written by: Alex Green

Today’s exclusive premiere comes from AKA Me.

The Los Angeles-based musician Stephanie D’Arcy who performs under the AKA me sobriquet, makes the kind of music that would sound perfectly at home on a playlist in between Kate Bush and St. Vincent.

Her new single “Eros” is a riveting number that comes replete with sonorous vocals, a pulsating arrangement and a truly aching chorus that’s decidedly unforgettable.

“The night I wrote ‘Eros’ I was experiencing a lot of jealousy and felt really embarrassed that I still had unresolved feelings towards a situation that happened so long ago,” D’Arcy says. “I needed to create a personality separate from myself that allowed me to write the song and express those emotions. I wanted to write lyrics that were completely over the top and delusional. The “inhuman” being in the video is a symbol for my ‘post-relationship self’ and resembles a side of me that died, but still left a mark in my subconscious. The song and video gave me the chance to let go of resentment and emotionally ‘throw up’ a lot of negative energy I was holding onto.”

Directed by Meriel O’Connell, the haunting and powerful clip for the song is rife with intensity and vulnerability.

Of the video, O’Connell tells SEM: “When Stephanie first showed me her song, ‘Eros’ we had gone in her car to listen to it on full blast (which I highly recommend doing). She explained how the lyrics question the side effects of a toxic relationship, and how as humans, we develop these infatuations for one another that oxymoronically can indicate a need to let one another go. I wanted to represent what she was telling me visually, and so we decided to have her being pulled between ‘reality’ and this other, darker, inhuman place where her lover in the video has come from. We had an incredible team behind this one, and I owe so many thanks to all of them for fleshing out this world that we’d created that night in her car.”