Claire Morales - "YVB"

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Photo by Wesley Kirk

I'm really struggling with how to describe the latest from Claire Morales. The Denton, TX based artist recently released "YVB," and it's a mind-blowing new song. It's a cosmically psychedelic song that lands somewhere between the light and flowy hippie psychedelia and the heavy psychedelic side. It's an intense single that incorporates 90's indie rock, alt-rock, Mexican guitar, folk, late 60's hard rock, and possibly more. "YVB" sounds like the desert, if that makes sense. This is one you simply need to listen to in order to fully get. The song is filled with swirling guitars and possibly violin to create a song that launches from pretty and poppy to giant, theatrical hard rock. Morales has crafted a truly breathtaking and mind altering song with "YVB," and she has us desperate to hear more. 

Claire Morales says of her new single:

“'YVB' is the score that plays as you enter the desert realm. The sun sets and the radio hits fade away into the dusk. Night has fallen and darkness obscures the hills and the mangled limbs of the Joshua Trees, giving them strange shadows and movement. Everything feels electric and alive. The headlights illuminate an alien landscape in bits and fragments, your mind left to piece together the rest. Your stomach drops in the terror of the vast nothingness of this desolate terrain. You arrive at your motel and quickly realize that this trip is out of your hands, unbridled and impossible to control. You are on the precipice of a great journey, one you have silently begged for for quite some time. Be careful what you ask of the universe. You have summoned chaos, and chaos has come knocking at your door. 

"This song was inspired by my time in the Mojave desert. It's cosmic out there and feels like the edge of a new world. I've travelled there both with my band and on my solo van trips, and the space is undeniably beautiful and spiritual and harsh and frightening. Within the album, this is the moment when we go from the fun and freeness of a road trip towards a greater call. This is the instant in which the heroine is summoned towards her ultimate journey. She has to go alone and leave behind everything that's come before if she is to reach the place she's meant to go. 

"I experienced this sensation during the first tour I took with my band, this feeling of having asked for change and then the horror of receiving it. I felt like I was at this crossroads, one path leading back towards the safety and comfort of the familiar and the other towards the terror and thrill of the unknown. And I went towards the chaos, knowing I would have to give up the life I knew to reach the place I needed to go. This song is that first moment of knowing, the foreshadowing of all to come, the surrender towards the forces that are guiding you towards the agony and the ecstasy of growth."

You can listen to "YVB" below. Lost in the Desert is due out August 19, and is available to pre-order through Bandcamp. For more on Claire Morales, check out the artist's website. Upcoming tour dates are below the song.


07.15 - Denver, CO @ Skylark Lounge 
07.16 - Kansas City, MO @ Farewell and Howdy
07.17 - Fayetteville, AR @ George's Majestic.
07.18 - Oklahoma City, OK @ Speakeasy
07.19 - Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves
08.23 -  Denton, TX @ Dan's Silverleaf 

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