Philadelphia-based tastemaker label Julia’s War is excited to share Water Season, an EP by Brazilian-American artist Winter and the Philly electro-lo-fi duo Hooky, marking a first-time collaboration between the artists. Four songs exploring friendship, crushes, wishes and regrets, Water Season finds Winter and Hooky melding their distinctive artistic visions into a sonically harmonious trip.
The announcement of today’s EP was heralded last month by “horseshoe.” The lead single 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.
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.
Water Season sounds like the natural next step from each artist’s last offering. Last year, Winter shared her …and she’s still listening EP, which was infused with trip-hop, spoken word, and electronic music. Hooky dropped their fourth album Mirage via Julia’s War last year; a trippy and triumphant, reverb-drenched record. Both of these releases pushed Winter and Hooky out of their comfort zones, toward each other to make something that was meant to be.
Adding this one to your rotation?
