Ahead of the Oct. 21 release of its highly anticipated debut album Love Me Forever, Pinkshift shows another side of its normally guitar-driven sound with “In a Breath,” a piano ballad showcasing frontperson Ashrita Kumar’s talents.
Kumar wrote the song in 2018 but has been saving it until now. “It’s a dive into my core, my greatest hopes, desires, loneliness, traumas, and fears,” Kumar says. “It’s a song about feeling dissociated from my body and fighting to stay alive despite it. It explores the existence of an impossible reality, contemplates the existence of a god and contemplates our capacity to love and be loved. It’s about guilt, shame, redemption and acceptance.”
The track’s accompanying video was directed by Sunny Singh, who says, “Capturing the authenticity of a live performance is what I’ve always been drawn to. It’s the space I’m most interested in exploring and refining. It’s also the reason why I’ve turned down every offer to do a choreographed and scripted music video. With ‘In a breath,’ I set out to create something that would allow me to render their live performance into something cinematically organic.”
One of the few current indie acts fully comprised of people of color and fronted by a person of South Asian descent, Pinkshift begins a North American tour Oct. 20 in its hometown of Baltimore.
