Texas four-piece Saint Blonde have spent the last couple of years steadily building a formidable catalogue of singles, beginning with last May's "Shy". Now, having barely given themselves time to breathe between drops, they're back with their second single of the year, "Love Me Instead". Featuring hazy guitar licks, dreamy electronics and an immediately infectious hook, it's a late but very worthy entry for song of the summer. The audio was released just a few days ago and now we've got some charmingly lowkey visuals that see the band jamming out in a studio, rounded out with bold colour blocks and artfully crafted symmetry.
Speaking with Complex via email, the band explained: "'Love Me Instead' was actually one of the first demo and song ideas that got started when we began writing the new material — as a side project. It got kicked around a bunch in different stages and forms prior to us diving into finalising it. We really wanted to make sure the track spoke to the tonality and identity we wanted to present as a band.
"Around this time, a very close friend had a relationship dissolve because there was 'another man'. Whether it was inspired by those events, or really coincidental is fuzzy, but I thought it would be an interesting and cathartic approach to tell that age-old love lost story from the perspective of the bad guy in the situation. We tend to romanticise the idea of running away and starting fresh, but there's sometimes a hidden and painful cost for that. Painting an image of the unsavoury character that instigates that change was a pretty visceral, emotional exploration for all of us."
