• News

• All

May 05, 2022 By Caleb Campbell

Later this year, Dublin-based singer/songwriter Katie Kim is set to add to her canon of moody alt pop with her forthcoming sixth full-length album, Hour Of The Ox. The record is intended to represent a new beginning for Kim since it is also set to be her concluding work under the Katie Kim moniker.

Written and recorded while moving to New York pre-pandemic, the record finds Kim expanding her songwriting with touches of strings, thickly orchestrated synths, and icy soundscapes. The full record is out this fall, and along with announcing the album, Kim has shared a new single “Mona,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Mona” is a work of dark beauty and ambitious soundcraft, introduced by a thick haze of effects and a sludgy pulsating synth melody. Combined with Kim’s crystalline vocals, the effect is almost uncomfortably intimate, verging on a sense of dense claustrophobia. By its end though, the song expands into soaring cinematic territory, backed by massive swells of dissonant strings and thundering drumming as the track reaches its dramatic climax.

As Kim describes, “Mona has existed for around 7 years, and has taken on many forms, but for this album version myself and John wanted to drape it in a magnificent sludge and a sense of close confinement for the first few introductory minutes. To then almost present a feeling of freedom and emancipation and awe at the final half. Mona represents an aspiration for something better to me.”

Check out the song and video below. In The Hour of The Ox is coming this September.