Philadelphia-based tastemaker label Julia’s War Recordings is excited to share “horsehoe,” a new single from Brazilian-American artist Winter and the Philly electro-lo-fi duo Hooky. It comes off Water Season, an EP arriving on February 14, 2025.
“horseshoe” is a wiry guitar-driven track, dripping in Winter’s syrupy vocals, and sprinkled with twinkling drum machines. Its electronic heartbeat passes through the listener like a beloved memory, shimmering with earnest lyrics and a DIY music video to match. Self-directed and filmed last fall in Philadelphia, Samira Winter and Hooky’s Scott Turner and Sam Silbert each took turns filming as they wandered through John Heinz Park and the Museum of Modern Art. The result was a blend of candid exploration —a portrait of their friendship and the emotional crossroads they shared, frozen in time.
“I took the train to Philly and for a couple of days, we just jammed at Scott’s place for hours,” says Winter about making the “horseshoe” music video. “It was this cool feeling of making new friends, exploring a city and also making art together for the first time. It strangely felt like I had known them forever, even though it was the first time we were hanging out.”
Water Season spawned when Winter and Hooky met online as fans of each other’s music and soon started corresponding with ideas, the first of which was “horseshoe.” After relocating from Los Angeles to New York, Winter took a trip down to Philadelphia to visit Turner and Silbert in the summer of 2024. A true friendship began and the trio spent the whole day writing songs together. Informed by Winter’s adoration for otherworldly dreamscapes and Hooky’s digital edge within the Philadelphia shoegaze scene, Winter and Hooky quickly realized their sounds fit like a puzzle. They coalesced their love for lo-fi, indie, and electronica to pair beautiful melodies with experimentation, sampling and guitar. What resulted was a sonic snapshot of the intersection of time and feeling; the bittersweet and fleeting sensation of the end of summer fading into fall.
What do you think of this one?
