San Francisco-based trio New Spell will be releasing their EP, Songs We Wrote For Thee, on June 7th, but decided to let The Bay Bridged exclusively premiere the stream of their new album here! The trio, led by frontwoman Leanne Kelly, combines sounds that range from Radiohead to Fiona Apple into something melodic and lugubrious. Kelly’s amazing vocal abilities are soothingly breathy and light. The EP’s “At The Edge” is slow and soft-treading, with Kelly’s vocals, the low synths and soft drum beats all coming together in a dreamy cacophony. Songs like “Sand & The Sea” are experimental, electronic, and poppy, focused around a dance-enticing beat.

The album was recorded at San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone Recording, and comes from the idea of cross-collaboration and community support that helped to bring the project to life. Kelly noted about the album: “While we were only planning to create a simple demo recording, we liked the material so much that we wanted to turn it into a bigger project, eventually deciding that our next album would be a collection of songs that were recorded, written for, or inspired by, people we know.”

“Watching Waiting,” which we covered earlier, is the strongest track on the album, a gloomy song that is adventurous and unorthodox in structure and set-up. It is extremely reflective of the range that New Spell has in creating a song, taking the listener on a journey, and portraying every feeling they set out to convey. It’s hypnotizing and transfixing, which sums up the sound that New Spell has created, and the feeling that Songs We Wrote For Thee gives listeners.

Kelly noted about the band’s process, that despite dealing with conflict between attempting to be spontaneous and improvisational, “In the end what we got was a sound that is very rich and full, and which we feel is a beautiful and honest representation of our musical development.”