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Jul 11, 2024 By Mark Redfern Photography by Tom van Huisstede

Dutch band Personal Trainer are releasing a new album, Still Waiting, on August 2 via Bella Union. Now they have shared its second single, “Cyan,” via a music video. The song features saxophone from Nick Bolland and vocal contributions from Dutch alt-pop singer Lena Hessels. Watch it below.

In the studio, Personal Trainer is mainly the project of frontman and bandleader Willem Smit, alongside co-producer/collaborator Casper van der Lans. But they fill out to a full band in a live setting.

Smit had this to say about the new song in a press release: “I had been working on ‘Cyan’ for a while and when I needed words, this song automatically turned into a love song. I was unsure about just openly declaring my love with this song, knowing it was going to end up on a record. It’s hard for me to put into words, which I guess is why I wrote a song and not an essay, but the conflict of me really caring about making music and feeling like I shouldn’t sing certain things is something I find interesting. I decided to write a song about this weird friction. With most of it, I was trying to make myself laugh or at least smile, and then I started to really like it. Somewhere along the process I found something like honesty or something beautiful in it. Lena intuitively changed the rhythm of the chorus ever so slightly which made it bounce a bit more. I took away a lot of my own vocals and replaced them with hers.”

Louis Cooper directed the “Cyan” video, which features portraits by Gracie Richmond. “I couldn’t think of anything better than unusual figures dancing, done in crude and awkward animation,” Cooper says. “Influenced by the works of Jim Blashfield and Michel Gondry, it was an attempt to make less of a visual collage and more of something that vaguely resembles the vintage charm of Captain Pugwash and Mr. Ben.”

Previously the band shared the album’s lead single, “Round,” via a music video.

Still Waiting is the followup to their 2022 debut, Big Love Blanket. The album in includes the band’s recent single, “Intangible.”

Smit had this to say about the album in a previous press release: “When I listen to the records I make, the main thing I hope is that every time something happens on them, you’re like, ‘Wow.’ I like to be taken by surprise like that on a record, to kind of be thrown around.”

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