Song You Need: KUČKA took a GIF and turned it into a song about loneliness

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KUČKA is an artist who is used to collaboration, providing vocals on multiple Flume albums as well as Mount Kimbie‘s latest. Working predominantly in those kind of group environments must, presumably, make returning to solo duty feel even more isolated than it does to the most hardened lone worker. This feeling is perhaps at the core of “Not There,” Laura Lowther’s quietly devastating new single.

In a statement released alongside “Not There,” Lowther explains that the creative spark for the song, her second since the release of her 2021 album Wrestling, came when she was scrolling Tumblr while procrastinating. “I was working on my computer one night and this repeating scene of rain on a skyscraper window came up,” she says. “It seemed really lonely somehow, even though it looked so pretty.”

Taking “lonely” and “pretty” as a prompt, Lowther built “Not There” around a delicate synth line that drips and drops throughout the self-produced song like water running down a windowpane. Gentle drums and a few glitches are thrown in for texture, but it’s that first loop that the song hangs off. “There’s a craving in my bones, subtle aching when you’re not there,” she sings on a song that deftly captures the need for company over all else. Time passes but that need remains, a demand laid out here as plain as “Stay with me a little bit longer.” “Not There” succeeds by condensing complicated feelings into simple ideas, pushing aside complexities to embrace the feeling of it all.