On See Mystery Lights, YACHT's debut on the influential indie label DFA, Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans mix melodic choruses, icy-cool verses and spoken-word bits that suggest old-school David Byrne. Underpinning all that are electronic beats, each warmly gurgling, snazzily danceable and hip-hop-literate. "Psychic City (Voodoo City)," the album's first single, reflects only a portion of that sound, but the song itself has generated healthy interest in its own right.
The beat is laid-back and warm, with a melodic bass line and simple electronic drums underpinning keyboards, staccato guitar chords, several varieties of digital blips and sweet, swaying choruses you won't mind having stuck in your head. Evans handles the lead vocal, dispensing surreal lyrics drawn from Rich Jensen's Two Million Years, a sound collage released on cassette in 1987. The city in "Psychic City" is apparently a place of extreme connectedness — a friendly locale where neighbors randomly throw parties for you and where your kitchen automatically bakes you cakes.
In the song's video, Bechtolt and Evans dress in all white and all black, respectively, representing good and evil and playing with a variety of religious accoutrements. At first, the video looks like a highly serious student film, but then Bechtolt dumps a bowl of communion wafers into his mouth like so many Ruffles, and the clip ends with the pair — apparently enemies until that point — making out with lusty aplomb. As with the song, the video blends artiness with a dollop of entertainment value. Not a bad formula for a young duo, especially one with YACHT's beat-programming skills.
Listen to yesterday's Song of the Day, and subscribe to the Song of the Day newsletter.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.