Baltimore-born but now splitting her time between Hamburg and Berlin, Sophia Kennedy thrives in the space between mischief and melody. Cutting her teeth in Hamburg’s electronic underground, she’s spent years weaving 1960s pop sensibilities into her avant-garde productions, creating music that feels both familiar and wonderfully off-kilter.
Her latest single ‘Rodeo’ is pure mischief - a ride of looping piano, shimmering synth bass and eerie, luminous choirs, jolted by a sudden Kate Bush-esque scream. A song that shouldn’t make sense but somehow does, ‘Rodeo’ thrives in its own eccentricity.
“There’s a saying, ‘don’t call us, we call you’ - that’s what ‘Rodeo’ did”, Kennedy says. “We didn't call ‘Rodeo’, it called us. It wrote itself, immediate and direct. We’ve only ever played it live, with just piano and bass. Back in the studio, we gave it a groove and a psychedelic guitar”.
“‘Rodeo’ is a journey into a dream-like state, perhaps a nightmarish one”, she continues. “It looks into a future with a lot of question marks. ‘Rodeo’ doesn’t know where it’s headed, but I’m pretty sure it knows where it took off”.
Her new album ‘Squeeze Me’ is out this May via City Slang.
🎧 Listen to ‘Rodeo’ below