Photo Credit: Alexa Viscius
Today, Los Angeles-based alternative R&B duo Mermaid (Brittany Campbell and Candace Quarrels) announced their debut album Iridescence. Set for release on October 20, the project is a thoughtful and joyful work of art that invites listeners to share in Mermaid’s love – full of genre-rich exploration, free-spirited intention, and transcendent harmonies.
Alongside the announcement, Mermaid also shared a fresh single + video, “Purr.” Premiered via FLOOD Magazine, the track is a grooving, tip-toeing neo-soul/funk fusion that merges into a confident, sonically experimental stomp. As dissonant harmonies climb on a staggering beat, the track explores Campbell and Quarrels’ feelings of powerlessness in a society where no one is listening. The accompanying music video features the duo dancing in sync with black and white footage projected onto them, as if they are existing between the realities shown in the footage.
“‘Purr’ started with our cat Splatt…she has this very loud, deep purr. It developed into this silly song that we’ve mumbled over for a long time without knowing what it was about,” the duo explains. “Then George Floyd happened, and that’s when the lyrics came to be. It’s a song that started off quite playfully but became more so about what was happening in the world and being stuck inside the house and ingesting all this darkness through Instagram. Even outside of the pandemic, it’s about feeling stuck and seeing everything that’s happening in the world and wanting to scream about it all the time…But also feeling like there’s nothing you can do and that the powers that be aren’t listening as much as they pretend to. It’s a song about being lost and stuck in the system.”
