“XOXO” is the latest single + music video from queer Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Camille Schmidt. It reveals an exhilarating side of Schmidt’s vocals. The song opens with a drum machine and a featherlight synth, before introducing her voice, distorted with vocal processing but somehow stronger for its digital warps. These layers of manipulation are like armor, a protection as she reveals the crevices of her inner thoughts, whether about raising a child with her best friend or the “demon in my room” she faces when she’s all alone.
“RIP the girl I was playing,” she sings as the instrumentation behind her starts to twist and double on itself, half-woman, half-machine, as she annihilates the ghosts of her former self.
As a child, Camille Schmidt would sit at the kitchen table with the models who posed nude in her parents’ art studio. She occasionally wondered why, at the end of these life drawing sessions, paintings of the female body in its most vulnerable form would be given an impersonal title like “Girl with Dogs #3” or “Woman Sleeping #7.”
On her upcoming debut album Nude #9, Schmidt renders revealing and personal portraits—of herself, her family, and former and future lovers. Seamlessly blending the sounds of synth-pop, folk, and punk, Schmidt’s debut album is a rapturous portrait of a songwriter realizing her full potential.
The Brooklyn-based singer and songwriter cracked open the folk-rock songbook on her debut EP Good Person, released this past June. While breakout single “Your Game” was a queer kiss-off set to the rollicking sound of alt-country legends like Lucinda Williams and Alison Krauss, there was a soft power in her wistful approach to heartbreak on “Bumblebee Drinks Lavender.” These six songs, which showcased Schmidt’s hallmark ability to balance an innately wry sense of humor with moments of quietly devastating self-reflection, hinted at something greater than the sum of their folk-rock parts.
Are you vibing with Camille Schmidt’s “XOXO”?
