Holy Wave stir from slumber on the warm late-afternoon psychedelia of “Cowprint”

Holy Wave have surfed the crests and troughs of psychedelic swells across their heady discography, now returning after a long slumber with a new single that hovers within the hopeful end of ennui. “Cowprint” is possessed of a palpable saudade that acknowledges emptiness with glass-half-full tranquility.

“Cowprint” fits neatly into Holy Wave’s established sonic persona, a soft and melancholic track composed of intricately detailed but infinitely approachable instrumentation propelled by shuffling percussion and an easy bassline. Delicate guitar mingles with detached yet strikingly lucid vocals, joined on the tail end by wooly analog synths that tint the track with the warm highlights of late-afternoon psychedelia easing gradually into the fleeting vibrancy of sunset. The influence of Holy Wave’s adopted Austin scene is readily apparent, but there is an undeniable element of their native El Paso’s desert sparseness, balanced precipitously on the very edge of America’s boundaries and propped up against one of the world’s most notorious metros, Juárez. This geographical duality translates into the band’s music, seeding the prevailing mellowness with an undercurrent of unease that feels not dissimilar from the sudden sensation of a hypnic jerk.

Describing a long, slow uncoupling and the vacuum of solitude that follows in its wake, “Cowprint” is akin to waking from a midday nap stretched too far into the waning hours of the day, a subtle disruption of the circadian rhythm that spreads outwards like ripples on the surface of a still pool disturbed by the tiniest of pebbles. “Woke up thinking about last night, and if you are really mine” rises from the instrumentation like the steam from a hot cup of tea, forgotten on a windowsill and slowly languishing into a tepid state of neutrality, its comforting qualities blunted by casual neglect. Unmoored from the stable presence of a relationship either real or imagined, “Cowprint” finds the psyche disoriented and unfettered, set adrift with a warm kind of aimlessness amidst the wandering dust motes hovering in nearly tangible rays of soft-filtered sunlight. Despite the encroaching vignette of evening and the loneliness that comes with the dark, there is a glimmer of hope scattered across the velvet blackness like so many stars in the night sky with the line “I’m so glad I met you,” a recurring sentiment delivered from the heart with a genuineness that celebrates, even amidst parting, a life ultimately changed for the better.

"Cowprint" is out now via Suicide Squeeze. Stream the track on Spotify and follow Holy Wave on Instagram.