Kevin Bronson on December 7th, 2022

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Life is a bowlful of narcissists. That’s where we start with Maraschino, the solo project of Hollywood native Piper Durabo, whose self-described “disco for introverts” harks to the days when what went up your nose was as important as what went in your ears. Out there on the dancefloor, euphoria and ennui make quite the couple, don’t they?

Blondie, Madonna and a host of underground dance-pop queens come to mind hearing the five singles Maraschino has released since launching the project in New York City four years ago. And today, Durabo — once one-half of the sister duo/dream-pop darlings Puro Instinct (and before that, Pearl Harbor) — announced that the debut Maraschino album, “Hollywood Piano,” will be out March 3.

The airy, intoxicating “Hi Desire” is the second single — and nothing if not … well, desirous. The song is “about calling for a higher octave of love — a love that feels extraordinary, ecstatic, elevated and otherworldly — and not settling for anything less,” Durabo says.

So there.

Stephanie Nicole Smith directs the “Hi Desire” video, which finds Durabo channeling Debbie Harry cosplaying as Marie Antoinette.

“The ‘Hi Desire’ video is inspired by one of my favorite movies, ‘Jubilee’ by Derek Jarman,” Durabo says. “Without giving too much away I’ll say it involves Queen Elizabeth I, her astrologer John Dee and an angel time-traveling to 1970s post-apocalyptic ‘punk’ Britain. It’s an exciting blaze of trash, glitter and mysticism. I love it so much. My character in the video, ‘Maraschino Antoinette,’ is a similarly anachronistic symbol of extravagant love in a time of total romantic nihilism — apps have flattened the dating experience in many ways, and a lot of us are too caught up in survival mode to get mixed up in anything too deep. She spends the video oscillating between wandering the streets of DTLA aimlessly searching for her lover and calling them into her dream zone.”

The album’s first single, “Smoke & Mirrors,” hints that the aforementioned dream zone might just be a mirage. “Life in the fun-house / Blowing kisses at myself / Cuz there’s really no one else / and there’s really nothing else,” she declares while encapsulating L.A. as “a funhouse full of dopamine-dependent seekers, lost in reflections of their ‘best’ selves and trapped in an infinity mirror of banality and artifice.”

Such is the soundtrack to survival on “Hollywood Piano,” which Durabo produced with a hand from Luke Darger and Chris Coady. The songwriter’s friend Sam Mehran (Test Icicles), who produced the second Puro Instinct album in 2016, was supposed to assist on the Maraschino album, but he took his own life in the summer of 2018.

||| Watch: The videos for “Hi Desire” and “Smoke & Mirrors”