Thursday, April 1, 2021

Squirrel Flower - "Hurt a Fly"

Photo by Tonje Thilesen

We've been huge fans of Squirrel Flower (aka Ella Williams) since she started releasing songs off her 2020 album I Was Born Swimming. That was my number six album of 2020, and even though it's been out for a little over a year, she's been steadily releasing singles and covers since then. Somehow Williams has found time to make another album during everything else. "Hurt a Fly" is the first single off that album, and it's surprisingly upbeat sounding despite being recorded during 2020. As with songs off her previous album, "Hurt a Fly" skirts the genres of alt-pop and indie rock. If anything, the new song is a little more rock than most of her previous releases. It falls in line with a lot of mid 90's indie rockers like Liz Phair and Juliana Hatfield, but with a little more of a 2021 indie pop sheen applied.

Ella Williams says of the new song:

“‘Hurt A Fly’ is me embodying a persona of gaslighting, narcissistic soft-boy type shit. The classic ‘sorry I acted violently, I'm not mad that you got upset at me, wanna hang out next week?’. I wanted to see what it was like to be a character trying to skirt around accountability. It's an angry and unhinged song, and for the video I wanted to be inside a bubble writhing around and trying to get out. A stranger filmed me practicing choreography at a public park, submitted it to meme page making fun of ‘influencers,’ and the video got 1,000,000 views, which in my mind is perfect thematically.”

You can watch the video for "Hurt a Fly" below. Planet (i) is due out June 25 on Polyvinyl. You can pre-order a copy here. For more on Squirrel Flower, check out the artist's website.

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