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Sep 06, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Mattieu Torres

Astral Bakers are a new French indie quartet from Theodora, Nico Lockhart, Zoé Hochber, and Sage (formerly of the indie trio Revolver). The four members have all collaborated on records and tours over the years, but the band’s genesis came at a concert at le Consulat. After the show, the band went into the studio and began writing their first tracks together, attempting to capture the organic element and collective presence they felt onstage.

The band debuted earlier this summer with their first track, “One More,” and today they’re back with another new song, “Shelter,” premiering with Under the Radar.

While the band’s previous single found them referencing back to bands like Big Thief and Supertramp, “Shelter” takes on a different presence, leaving the band awash in buzzing layers of guitar and dreamy melodicism. What unites both tracks is the band’s vitality and expansive sonics. Astral Bakers know how to lift a song skyward and they do so to standout effect on “Shelter,” with Sage’s vocals anchoring the track while the guitars liftoff into a floating reverie. Meanwhile, the lyrics match the gauzy, sun-lit vibe of the track with an equally romantic element: “And maybe it is / Not how we pictured the reality, but it’s no vision it’s reality / Now do you see / And if we’re together for eternity / Let’s turn the heavens into a party.”

The band says of the track, “‘Shelter’ is a song that we composed and recorded pretty fast. We were working on other tracks at the studio and found the main riff during a break. Then everything came up very smoothly, almost effortlessly, as if we already knew the song. Ambroise went back home and the morning after he told us: I wrote some lyrics, I think it’s going to match. And that was it. It’s a song about seeing your own life from a new perspective. It’s becoming aware of the chance you have when you thought everything was going wrong or when your life doesn’t turn up as you would have expected. It’s finding a shelter in the arms of the one you love and trying to make things as good as they can be.”

Check out the song and video below, out everywhere now.