Before Sunrise

Every autumn, half the music world suddenly reaches for the introspective record. Strip away the production, confess something, prove you have depth. Most of it is thin—sounds intimate because it’s quiet, sounds profound because the reverb is heavy. Anna Leone, though, she actually pulls it off.

I found her new video for My Soul I recently and it’s one of those rare cases where the restraint is real. She and her directors, Victoria Lafaurie and Hector Albouker, shot it on a ferry in Vaxholm, Sweden, at four in the morning. They wanted that light you only get before sunrise—that specific half-dark when everything feels both exposed and hidden at once. It’s the kind of choice that shows someone thinking about what a song actually needs instead of what makes good content.

Leone was clear about what she didn’t want: no flourish masquerading as sincerity. The video does what the song does—it starts slow and spare, then builds into something with real weight, but never loses that close feeling. That’s harder than it sounds. Easy to make something feel big. Hard to make it feel big and still intimate.

I don’t know much about her yet, but I’m listening.