SWiiMS are a four-piece indie band from Toronto, whose sound could loosely be described as a mix of shoegaze, new wave, alternative, and Brit rock. As people always say; first impressions are everything, and bursting out of the headphones like a heady mix of the Cure, Cocteau Twins, early Blur, and DIIV, with smooth feminine vocals is a pretty good one to make.

It’s an arresting mix of influences on show, with a wall of jangly guitars, propulsive bass, and Mai Diaz Langou’s languid vocals soon slipping in to take center stage. I make no secret on here about my penchant for minor chords and melancholy, so there was little chance I would take a pass on SWiiMS. Fill Me Up is the kind of track that descends and surrounds you, like a dense and swirling fog – giving you a jolt when the band change things up in the chorus. There’s a dreamlike quality not just to Langou’s voice, but also to the abstract lyrics – with lines like “you’re standing on my eyes” standing out for their strangeness. Well, I say standing out, but the truth is that they seep through into your subconsciousness. It just adds to the almost disassociative vibe of the track, with almost every element moving around in the mix.

Often when I listen to a song multiple times, I can’t help myself from daydreaming about what type of movie it could soundtrack. In this case it’s quite easy, as Fill Me Up sounds like it could have comfortably been on the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. Musically, it feels like a cousin to something like the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Just Like Honey – dripping with reverb and calling to mind a seemingly everlasting dusk.

SWiiMS are a band that are very much on my radar now. Theirs is an irresistible brand of dream pop, taking tiny pieces of the familiar and rearranging them into something fresh. Fill Me Up is an intriguing debut single, and one that suggests that SWiiMS have plenty of distance left to run. I’m looking forward to hearing more from them over the coming months.

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You can find out more about SWiiMS on their Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

* This track was discovered via Musosoup. A small fee was paid in exchange for publication. See ‘About / Contact’ page for more details.