Filipino-Australian singer Daine's debut single is assured, polished, and clearly the work of a teenager. "Picking Flowers," premiering above, fuses trap beats, Midwestern emo guitar, and a nihilistically detached voice so seamlessly that it could only have been written by a 17-year-old artist who's grown up hearing those sounds co-exist. It clocks in well under the three-minute mark, barely rising above a croak, its ghostly melody looping like a muffled music box.
"I was writing riffs in my bedroom trying to figure out what to do with myself amidst a breakup early 2019," Daine wrote of the song in an email to The FADER. "'Picking Flowers' is like a haunting distant memory to me, but nostalgic and special in that it was one of the first songs that I ever recorded.”
Watch the video for "Picking Flowers" at the top of the page.
