Song You Need: poolblood delivers indie rock intimacy on “wfy”

The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.

On their debut EP Yummy, Toronto-based singer-songwriter poolblood revealed an affection for hot-blooded pop-punk on three of the EP's four tracks. "Memoir," the last and best song on Yummy, was the offbeat sibling of the bunch with its gauzy slowcore textures, and hinted at an artist who had yet to settle into the best version of themself. 2022 has seen another shift for poolblood, who kept their dreamy sonic tendencies while reemerging with a more confident indie rock persona.

"wfy," the fourth single from poolblood's upcoming debut album mole, finds them at their most wistful. In the song, love is real and integral but an abstraction we can't truly grasp, an endeavor that would be as futile as the conscious regulation of our own circulatory systems. Drums shiver and drizzle like rain on a window as poolblood plucks out Velvet Underground guitar and sings "I reek of the subway / I’m drenched in your warmth / I've never had a halo / Longing to be loved / Isn’t the point to dance / Or to stand still?" As the song builds itself with a thrumming string section and convergence of choral voices, "wfy" ends with the feeling of a communal affair, no small achievement for a song with such deeply ingrained intimacy.