Marcel Winatschek

Sleep on Fire

Scott Matthew was playing his new album There Is an Ocean That Divides… at the Passionskirche in Kreuzberg that night—a record containing at least one ballad, "White Horse," that genuinely alarms me every time it comes on—and while following his trail across the internet I stumbled onto Holly Miranda.

Brooklyn, Detroit, and Tennessee, depending on who you ask. No label, as far as I can tell, which makes sense because the music doesn’t sound like something a label would confidently sign. Their first EP, Sleep on Fire, has been out since March. What’s on it is honest and jagged and self-destructive—songs that feel like they were written with the lights off, in the way that the best Scott Matthew songs do, but with their own particular damage. It’s rare to hear something and think: this might ruin me. Also the singer is cute, which never hurts. Listen to them.