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Aug 02, 2021 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Marissa Findlay

Eclectic New Zealand singer/songwriter Reb Fountain found special success last year despite the raging pandemic, releasing her self-titled record, her debut with the venerated indie label Flying Nun Records, and her most complete work yet. Now, this year Fountain is quickly following the record’s success with her upcoming fifth full-length album, Iris. She’s already shared “Heart” and “Beastie” this year, her first two singles from the album and she is now back with her latest release, “Lacuna,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Lacuna” is another taste of Fountain’s layered songwriting, a surreal trip into her dense lyricism and winding melodies. The track continues to build off of the expansive new ambitions she showed on Reb Fountain, expanding her noir alt folk in new directions. “Lacuna” steadily builds from a dark, meditative opening into new anthemic heights, bolstered by pounding piano and fiery guitar work. Meanwhile, Reb Fountain has accompanied the track with an equally surreal new video. Shot in Queenstown, New Zealand by director Lola Fountain-Best, the video envisions Fountain clad in wings of wire and foliage, dancing through forest lanes and fields of sunflowers.

Reb Fountain explains some of the meaning behind the track below:

“Songs help us stop lying to ourselves.

What a way to start kisses in the dark

There is strong loyalty to the secret; the social contract which binds us to the burden of the unsaid. The tension between devotion to the lie - masquerading as protection - and the desire to protect oneself, can render us absent to even the starkest of realities.

She slept through the war.

There is some comfort in avoiding the storm, beating one’s wings against the glass ceiling wondering why you cannot reach the sky. Yet flying is what we do. And the weight of seeing the space that you do not fill can become too heavy to bare; where any solace gained from hiding from one’s truth is a poor reward for silence.

I couldn’t see but ripples in the water told me something’s out there

Songwriting is an opportunity to find agency, where experiences and life become transformed through story. We start to see ourselves as whole - imagine that which is already out there - searching for some way out and in to ourselves.

The sum of us apart

What’s it like to grow into oneself, to wrestle with the intangible nature of our human condition, to see who we are. Unifying our many selves - the sum of our parts - we embrace the full complexities of the whole … uneasy, unsteady and uncomfortable but united and inexorably present.

Now my roots are extending

Lacuna is the space for our voice to emerge into. A new dance that welcomes you into the void, to the all. It’s a reckoning, an opportunity to expand and contract anew. Welcome.”

Check out the song and video below and watch for Iris, coming October 1st via Flying Nun Records.