Bright, percussive guitar lines erupt into raucous blasts of New Wave synths on “Dopamine,” the latest single from Victoria, Canada’s Pastel Blank. The song picks up where the debut single from the new album left off, with an irreverent and critical view of the status quo. This new collection of music highlights the band’s growth from bedroom-produced art-pop to the multi-faceted New Wave found on 2022’s Pastel Blanc EP, engineered and produced by musical multi-hyphenate David Parry (Loving, Phoebe Alice Lou).
Formed in 2019 from lead singer/songwriter Angus Watt’s desire to provoke more dancing within the Victoria, Canada indie music community, Pastel Blank carries on the torch of such genre-defying luminaries as Talking Heads and Women. Kaleidoscopic guitarwork blends together jagged jabs of funk, soft shades of bossa-nova, and punchy disco beats, creating a listening experience that flows between the grooves of indie rock, prog-pop, and New Wave.
Produced by longtime band member and musical polymath Connor Head, “Dopamine” is the second single from Pastel Blank’s forthcoming debut LP. One of Watt’s desires for the recording in-studio was for the single to express the excitement and playfulness of the soon-to-be infamous Pastel Blank live show. Dopamine is about the moment when you realize you’ve been flipping between apps like you’re checking an empty fridge for the 10th time, hoping to feed your receptors something that feels as good as the younger days of however long ago you picked up your phone.
Playing into the personas of morally-defunct content machines and gleaming-teeth influencers, Watt glides effortlessly between suave crooner and off-kilter New Wave vocals, offering listeners an opportunity to dance away the heaviness and positioning “Dopamine” as a body-moving staple on 2023’s summer playlists.
