LA-based Alt-R&B artist Alt Bloom released new track and video for “Stay” today via Big MTN Records. The video, directed by Skyler Bocciolatt, sees Alt Bloom alone in a room on a rare stormy night in L.A., wistfully pleading with his lover to leave the outside world behind for one night and stay with him.
Watch/stream/download it here.
“Stay” spins a slow-burning romance from one of the rarest of phenomena: a rainy day in Los Angeles. “Because rainy days almost never happen here, I wanted to write a song where I’m asking someone to just stay inside and experience that with me,” explains singer/songwriter Ethan Thompson, who wrote much of the tender-hearted track on an upright piano. “It’s asking them to ignore whatever they need to do that day—just shut out the rest of the world so we can enjoy this special thing together.”
Made over the course of a marathon session with producer/engineer Brian Phillips, “Stay” unfolds in soft-toned verses that perfectly channel the feeling of hiding away, with Phillips’s warm guitar work magnifying that dreamy mood. But at the chorus, the song takes on a greater intensity, shifting into a bold statement of infatuation.
“A lot of my songs right now are coming from that turning point of going from liking someone to loving them,” says Thompson. “At the beginning of ‘Stay,’ it’s a little tentative, where I’m still on the line between like and love—but then by the end, I’m just jumping right in and taking everything to a whole new place.”
“Stay” is the latest in a series of notable tracks released from Alt Bloom this year. With the euphoric debut track, “Call It Home,” described as “an alt-pop masterpiece” by Obsessxns, followed by the warped beats of “Potential,” and the dreamy textures of “October Eyes,” Alt Bloom’s momentum continues well into 2020 with a five-song EP slated for the top of the year followed by a string of new music to be released throughout the spring and summer.
About Alt Bloom
With its endlessly unpredictable fusion of alt-R&B and classic singer/songwriter pop, Alt Bloom offers the sonic equivalent of that purposeful escape: warmly textured and wonderfully unhurried, its songs unfold with a subtle hypnotic power, and ultimately invite the dreamy introspection that leads to much-needed self-discovery.
Alt Bloom represents the joyful outcome of a lifetime of soul-searching for Ethan Thompson, a multi-instrumentalist whose first musical creation was a handmade songbook assembled for his piano teacher when he was just seven. Collaborating with his close friend Brian Phillips (a producer/engineer known for his work with COIN, Walk the Moon, and Saint Motel), Thompson trusted his musical intuition with more boldness and imagination than ever before. Along with embracing the eclectic influence of the artists who’ve shaped his sensibilities over the years—everyone from Tom Petty to Stevie Wonder to Red Hot Chili Peppers to Mac Miller—Thompson reached a new level of open-heartedness in his lyrics. But while his storytelling reveals sometimes-painful truths about his dreams and frustrations, an utter lack of self- seriousness often finds Thompson packaging those confessions in tongue-in-cheek wordplay, and infusing a certain humor into each track.
Now based in L.A., Thompson hikes the local mountains at least once a week but continues to name the 10-hour-long, largely off-trail trek up Mount Siyeh in Montana, as his all- time most treasured journey—and a perfect metaphor for the instinct-driven creativity he brought to his new project. “For about a third of the hike you’re mostly guessing your way up the mountain,” Thompson notes. “You’re just scrambling and scrambling, and at some point it seems impossible that you’ll ever get to the top. And then once you finally make it there’s such a feeling of serenity, and it gives you a bird’s-eye view of all these things that usually weigh so heavily on your mind. Everything else falls away, and all that matters is that feeling of connection with this beautiful unknown that’s so much bigger than you.”
