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Sep 20, 2022 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Vanessa Heins

Earlier this year, Canadian and First Nations musician Zoon returned with a new EP, Big Pharma, his latest release following his 2020 debut record, Bleached Wavves. Zoon began by combining dense shoegaze guitars and First Nations’ music in a style he coined as “moccasin-gaze,” but his latest efforts have also shown ambitious new shades to his songwriting, incorporating touches of hip hop, psych, and pop on Big Pharma.

Tomorrow, he’s set to continue this evolution with the reveal of his surprise four-track EP, A Sterling Murmuration, and today he’s shared one of the EP’s highlights, “Play Ground,” premiering early with Under the Radar.

After the collaboration and feature-heavy approach of Big Pharma, “Play Ground” dives back into the realm of shoegaze, this time crafting a decadent sampling of dream pop melodies. The track’s dreamy tempo gives it the feel of a lilting ballad, yet the prominent percussion and lush washes of guitar also add an element of swirling bliss in the same vein as touchstones like The Cocteau Twins. In true dream pop fashion, the track feels like a tidal wave of overlapping melodies and effects, leaving listeners no choice but to be swept away.

Zoon says of the track, “I grew up listening to a lot of punk and rock bands, but never related to their lyrics, so it’s really important for me, as an indigenous person, to be vulnerable so that I might inspire someone who may have grown up under the same circumstances and feels alone.”

He continues, saying of the new EP, “A Sterling Murmuration as a body of work is material from ten plus years ago. I then recorded these songs with my high school friends in Winnipeg but broke the record into a few different movements. Big Pharma was the first movement and this is the second.

The title ‘A Sterling Murmuration’ comes from the movement that a flock of birds do for safety from predators. They use this technique for other reasons such as warmth at night, also to exchange information about feeding areas. I feel very connected to this concept, I see it in humans and how we need a strong community to protect each other. isolation played a role in this body of work and is supposed to display the danger in isolating. While in this state we set ourselves up to be in harm’s way by outside forces but breaking out and embracing humility and community you can finally transcend into a healthy trajectory.”

Check out “Play Ground” below. A Sterling Murmuration is out September 21st via Paper Bag Records.