Video: Boyish, ‘Kill Your Pain’ (with King Princess)

Kevin Bronson on June 22nd, 2023

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Boyish make dream-pop loaded with nuance, sagacity and the musical textures to give it all heft.

The L.A.-based duo, India Shore and Claire Altendahl, launched their project in 2016 when they were attending Berklee. Ever since, their profile has risen, in the LGBTQ+ community and beyond, striking a particular chord with last spring’s EP, “My Friend Mica,” which they called “party music for people who are sad during summer.” They’ve followed with a string of singles, including “Kill Your Pain,” a collaboration with King Princess, released today.

It’s a song that belies its playful, tender tone, exploding into a pain-numbing burst of shoegaze at the 2-minute mark. “We wrote ‘Kill Your Pain’ about being so enmeshed with someone else that you lose your own identity, and in the end sort of succumbing to it and giving into it,” Boyish says of the track. “We wanted it to feel like someone finally realizing they’re in someone else’s hell, accepting it and giving into some of your darker instincts.”

King Princess, co-produced, is enthralled, naturally. “My bass player Logan took me to see Boyish a couple years ago and I was instantly obsessed,” says King Princess, for whom Boyish will open on U.K. dates in July. “They sent me the song and I had to jump on it. The rest is history. Enjoy babies.”

The song will appear on Boyish’s next EP, “Little Demon Boy,” which will be released later this summer.

||| Watch: The videos for “Kill Your Pain” and previous single “Is This a Breakdown Baby?”