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Nov 07, 2024 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Kika Echeverría

Berlin-based electronic duo Soft as Snow debuted a decade ago with a pair of EPs, followed by their 2018 album, Deep Wave, and their 2022 album, Bit Rot. Over that time, bandmates Oda Starheim and Øystein Monsen have developed a mercurial and genre-curious style, fusing analog and digital textures and wavering between production fidelities while touching on strains of art pop, electronica, and trip hop.

The pair are back tomorrow with their third full-length album, Metal.wet, which they’ve teased over the past year with a series of singles, “Palms,” “Whip,” and “Bruised Dawn.” Today, ahead of the album’s release, the duo are sharing an early listen to its title track, premiering with Under the Radar.

“Metal.wet” is a maze of immersive loops and samples, built atop the pair’s immaculately detailed production and Starheim’s otherworldly vocals. Starheim’s melodies feel like an alien siren call, ringing in coiled chants above the track’s blur of synths. The instrumental is in constant motion, gradually introducing, layering, and removing new textures and melodies. The track may build atop a stuttering sample or an alluring synth loop, only to divert into a gurgling, distorted rhythm or a stinging bed of noisy feedback. Later the pair settles into a groove, steadily building higher into an intoxicating swirl of rhythms and samples before stripping back to its main synth loop and a bed of dreamy keys.

The pair describe the track as “Slippery rhythms and noisy textures; it unfurls gradually, tunnel movements. We invited visual and performance artist Minna Etein to play synth piano for the ending.”

Check out the song below. The full Metal.wet album is out tomorrow via Portland label Beacon Sound. The band are also hosting a listening party to the full album today at 12 noon Portland time and 9pm Berlin time.