Premiere: Dead Little Penny Unveil Single 'Depression' + Video

Auckland shoegaze / dream-pop crew Dead Little Penny have unveiled 'Depression', a cathartic standalone single complimented by an artfully impressionistic video created by Rodney Fisher (Mixed Vege, Goodshirt). In the smouldering tune frontwoman Hayley Smith reflects on the complexities of love and lust over an increasingly fuzzed-out backdrop of grungey guitars and haunting synths. Dead Little Penny have a clutch of live appearances on the cards, including a release party for 'Depression' at Whammy Backroom on 25th January with Lexxa and Two Cartoons, an appearance at Milk & Honey Festival (in celebration of International Women's Day on 8th March), and a slot at Music In Parks: Indie Pop Stars with Ha The Unclear and Boycrush at Auckland Domain on 31st March. We caught up with Smith about the complicated themes lurking behind the single, the new clip and Dead Little Penny's upcoming debut album Urge Surfing - experience the video for 'Depression' here and read her words below...

'Depression' expresses a range of conflicted feelings, what sparked the lyrics for your new song?

I wrote this song about falling in love with both parties battling their own mental health issues and demons. On one hand, you want to be there for them to support them and build them up, but on the other hand you know you're a bit useless because you're also completely crumbling, maybe even a total POS. Even though sometimes you can see the complete train wreck of a relationship up ahead, once you start to get that giddy feeling of love/lust, there's not much you can do to stop it, and that's something I wanted to explore here.

I think while the subject matter might come off serious, I tried to make light of it. That's how I deal with everyday situations anyway, so why not bring that into the way I write songs?

This is Dead Little Penny's third standalone single in about a year, are you working towards a collection of some kind? Do you reckon your sound has been developing in a specific way during that period?

We've been (slowly) working on our album, Urge Surfing, which we'll be bringing out in a few months. Every time we get close to finishing, my anally retentive side emerges and we decide to make little tweaks.

I think the longer we work on it, the more experimental we get for sure. Sean (Martin-Buss) loves messing with weird feedback sounds, Simon (Buxton) always finds strange bits and pieces to add - we have one track that begins with 30+ seconds of the shipping forecast.

You new video was created by your partner Rodney Fisher (Mixed Vege, Goodshirt) - what was the process involved in making the clip? How do you both balance your creative and domestic lives?

Rodney's the master of taking sneaky footage, you barely ever realise he's doing it. This video though was a bit of a collaborative effort. Some of the footage I'd taken on the motorway during rush hour in winter, and some of the drunken footage is of one of my best friends during New Years at Omaha Beach a year or so ago. I think my favourite parts of this video are Rodney's stop motion play-doh creatures.

We always try to make sure our videos really capture our life and our home. Most of the clips are from in or around our property and really scoop up the good and bad of our day-to-day lives.

As for balancing creative and domestic lives, can anyone really balance that? It's often a push-pull on who gets to take up the spare time for creating. Whoever has something coming out soonest gets to skip out on family life for songwriting, recording, practicing. We're both musicians so it's kind of always been that way in our relationship. We don't know anything else!