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Jun 08, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Steve Gullick

Late last year, we shared news of singer/songwriter Nadine Khouri’s single, “Keep on Pushing These Walls,” and her sophomore album, Another Life. That record released late last year, with Khouri echoing shades of blues and folk in stark, minimalist, and moving soundscapes. On a record full of gleaming nocturnal gems, “Song of a Caged Bird” was one of the tracks that shined especially bright, and today Khouri is back with an accompanying video for the song, premiering with Under the Radar.

Khouri is a talented and charismatic vocalist, but oftentimes those talents are most apparent when she has space to show off her subtleties. “Song of a Caged Bird” provides her that space, surrounding her vocals with spacious swells of Mellotron, guitar, and ambling percussion. In this shadowed and smokey setting, Khouri traces a wilting lament for connection and liberation, dreaming of a world beyond the borders of digital interaction we often live within: “What kind of song would the caged bird be singing? / What kind of life would the caged bird be living? / Too strung out on the screen to feel true light / See the flowers bending to a neon light.”

Khouri says of the track, “This was the first song I wrote for the album, originally as a lament on surveillance capitalism. We were getting ready to go into the studio to record it and the whole world went into lockdown… Of course, the lyrics spooked me out then and the song took on a whole other meaning for me when I was between four walls for months. Ironically, the social media I was bemoaning had, quite literally, become my only way of connecting with anyone in the outside world.”

The accompanying video comes courtesy of Marseille-based illustrator Aude Nasr, who created a hand-drawn animated video for the track exploring its themes of technological isolation. Khouri says of the video, “I love Aude (Nasr)’s work and find her characters really relatable. Her illustrations are beautiful and thoughtful, often giving voice to others. By chance, I saw that we were both living in Marseille, so we met and found a lot of common ground between us. The collaboration came about in a really organic and inspiring way. It was a joy to collaborate on this with her.”

Check out the song and video below. Khouri’s new album, Another Life, is out everywhere now.