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Jul 08, 2022 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Shane Mackenzie

Coma Girls is the psych folk moniker of LA-based singer/songwriter Chris Spino. Since their 2015 self-titled debut, the project has undergone a continuous process of reinvention, at times presenting as a band, a solo project, or a rotating coterie of studio musicians. The project’s latest formation is a close collaboration between Spino and producer Christian Paul Philippe, who together have crafted maximalist shoegaze-tinged folk for Coma Girls’ upcoming sophomore record, No Umbrella For Star Flower.

Spino introduced the record with its lead single and opening track, “Knife,” and today he has shared the record’s accompanying video, premiering with Under the Radar.

“The Knife” offers a taste of what is to come with the full album, introducing this latest iteration of Coma Girls with blown-out production and a towering wall of gauzy guitars. However, alongside the massive wall of sound comes a certain intimacy emphasized by Spino’s languid vocals and poetic lyrics. The result is a magnetic combination of shoegaze and folk stylings, retaining folk’s confessional edge amidst the maximalist shoegaze aesthetics.

Spino says of the accompanying video, “When I first moved to LA I was homeless and I would sleep under this one tree in Echo Park. When we shot this video last year, the park had been shut down for renovations and the area had gentrified—They put up fences surrounding the perimeter and kicked out all of the people who had been living there for a very long time as it was a public place. I went to the ‘Service Not Sweeps’ protests and saw there was really nothing any of us could do other than directly try to help unhoused people find shelter or provide them with help in the form of water, food, or even just a way to charge their phone. I could see myself in the people being displaced. We are all supposed to be in this world working together. All of the police sweeps and displacement seemed to be politically and financially driven, which corrupts natural order.”

He continues, saying “I guess when artists see a kind of injustice, we make art about how it makes us feel. The ‘Knife’ video, generally, is about seeing yourself in others and remembering that you don’t know what somebody else is going through, especially people that are without housing since their everyday lives are extremely unbalanced and they could really benefit from a lot of assistance. When I first came to Echo Park after moving from Atlanta with a backpack and an acoustic guitar and being lost in Hollywood for months, it was the first place in LA that felt like home. It was like I was right back in Little Five Points and the culture was undeniably real and you could feel a sense of rich history, just a ten minute drive down Sunset from tourist-town Hollywood.”

Check out the song and video below. No Umbrella For Star Flower is coming September 2nd via Baby Robot Records.