• News

• All

Sep 04, 2024 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Emily Pinto

This month, Los Angeles indie singer/songwriter Temme Scott is set to return with her forthcoming sophomore full-length album, A Long Year, due out on September 13th. The record follows after her 2020 full-length debut, Trust You, Trust You, and her subsequent EPs, 2022’s A Total Shame! and 2023’s July. Those records introduced Scott’s warm and winsome style of indie pop and her vulnerable lyrical voice, showing a talent for disarming the listener with charming melodies before revealing stirring emotional truths.

Scott has teased A Long Year with a series of new single releases, including “Copilot,” “Healing,” “Contract Killer,” and “SPACE,” and today she’s back with another new single, “Poems & Candy,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Poems & Candy” is the most sparse of Scott’s latest singles, forgoing massive choruses and sleek pop production for a more tender folk sheen. The track features only a pastoral guitar melody and Scott’s yearning vocals, leaving plenty of space for a deeply emotional performance from Scott. Her vocals feel intimate, resonant, and simply honest, yet the melodies prove equally magnetic, shining with a gentle golden glow. Lyrically, the track finds Scott trying to describe the indescribable, reflecting on treasured memories and trying to capture the moment in a word or a feeling: “Guess I’m here but I’m floating / Picturing any emotion / It’s quite a lot to be kneeling / Right in front of the feeling / I’m all alone in my bedroom / Can’t find the words but I will soon / I still believe all of the meaning / I’m right in front of the feeling.”

Scott explains of the track, “A year or so ago, a few of my closest friends came over while I was having a really hard time. We sat on my bed together and they read me poems from Devotions by Mary Oliver, and I cried and cried. A little later on, Elijah, my producer and collaborator, showed me this beautiful guitar melody that he’d been wanting to write to for a while. For whatever reason, that moment with my friends in my bedroom came back to me. We started writing together about being so far from the feeling you’re searching for, feeling like you’re just “right in front of [it],” but can’t quite get there. So, “Poems & Candy” kind of spilled out, and actually, the final vocals and guitar parts are from the first demo that day we wrote it. It’s really special for me to listen back to it, because everytime I listen, it feels like we just wrote it.”

Check out the song below. A Long Year is out everywhere on September 13th.