New Music Monday: S H I R A

We highlight new music from female-fronted bands every Monday. This week, we’re excited to feature the music video for the second single, “Literally Dead” off SHIRA’s upcoming album Subtle Creature.

SHIRA is poet Shira Erlichman’s musical project. A multi-media maker whose name means both “song” and “poem” in Hebrew, she is no stranger to genre collapse and productive friction. Rather than separate her creative outlets and indentity, Shira sees them as being in conversation with each other, “each genre as a mouth speaking to the other.” On this new album, Shira finds herself “bending toward moments of verse.” Her influences for this work include poets Aracelis Girmay and Nazim Hikmet along with Saba, Chance the Rapper, and Noname. As Shira says, “My ear can’t help it, it wants to put Bjork, Weezer, and Chance into a petri dish. I’m not responsible for what happens in there!”

Shira describes this track as being “in the spirit of early, campy No Doubt meets underdog Empire Records.” The video, which is full of color and power, is a lighthearted anthem against monotony and doubt.