Stream: SWIMM, ‘You Never Fake It’ (feat. Lauren Ruth Ward)

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SWIMM (Photo by Sydney Schafer)

Remember the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown? “I have some weird nostalgia for those first few weeks,” says Chris Hess, frontman of the L.A. psych-pop outfit SWIMM.

“I don’t mean that in any disrespect to those that were sick or hurting. It’s just that I really escaped to and lived in that song for that time and through the beauty of art or whatever, that place became more real to me than the terrifying state of things.”

That backgrounds the new SWIMM single “You Never Fake It,” which features a vocal cameo from Lauren Ruth Ward, Hess’s collaborator in the duo Aging Actress. It’s a lush, production-heavy track that Hess says has its origins on a rainy night in Manhattan. Now? “when I hear this song it brings me back to the first couple weeks of quarantine,” he explains. “It was actually very stormy during that time so the air outside was ripe with panic and urban drainage, while inside my warehouse … mostly panic, ganja and sweatpants. Turns out productivity can really blossom when you’re not sneaking into the ballroom bathrooms of East L.A. snorting cayenne pepper with strangers for a head rush. This new allotment of focus time let me dive into the production of this one.”

||| Stream: “You Never Fake It”

||| Previously: “Feel Better,” Live at Echo Park Rising 2019, live at Love You Down III, “Sentimental Porno,” “True Romance,” “Speak Politely,” “First Time,” “Man’s Man”