Born oceans apart and now based in Prague, Kaan and Mindolé have made the sort of record that feels designed for twilight hours and private reveries. Odd Little Thrills work with atmosphere, certainly, but there is also real finesse in Happy Together, a song that enters quietly and settles in with confidence, carried by a steady beat, soft-focus guitars, and an intimate mood.
The duo describes their transcontinental chemistry as sounding “like faded VHS tapes of half-remembered dreams,” and it is one of those rare self-descriptions that actually rings true. The drum pattern keeps everything gently in motion while the guitars wind around it with a subtle eastern inflection, and the vocals arrive in a hushed, reverberating tone that never overwhelms the arrangement. Happy Together unfurls the quiet power of warmth and restraint.
You can hear traces of Boy Harsher in the ominous pop pull of it all, and a touch of Morcheeba in the unhurried, down-tempo sensuality. There are also moments that call to mind Beth Orton, Moby, Cocteau Twins, and Sarah McLachlan, especially in the softness of the vocal presence and the way the song carries emotion without overselling it.
The red-tinged video deepens that feeling, wrapping the track in a muted glamour that fits it beautifully. Split screens pass like fractured memory, dark visions unfold in the club, and a rush of symbols keeps surfacing and slipping away: flashes of nature, hands clutching a rope, a scene by the lake, a guitar held by a tree, tunnels giving way to huge open landscapes. Watching it feels a bit like being dragged along on tour with the band through a beautifully unsteady fever dream, half-documentary, half-delirium, with every image arriving charged and slightly out of reach.
Watch Happy Together below:
The EP, There Was, There Wasn’t, carries that same duality throughout. The press notes describe “simultaneous, layered timelines travelling together yet apart, like parallel trains,” and in this case, the image fits. The music holds contrasting sensations in delicate balance: closeness and distance, comfort and unease, tenderness and tension. The cool throb of the drum machine, the textured percussion, and the dreamlike drift of the guitars give the songs a feeling of movement through memory, as though past and present are brushing against one another in real time.
This is a track equally at home in a Berlin basement party, in a coffee shop sipping a lavender latte, or stretched out on the couch with a beer and a cigarette. Odd Little Thrills are elegant, alluring, and quietly affecting, a debut that moves with grace and leaves a gentle impression.
Listen to There Was, There Wasn’t, out now via Pity Party Records, below:
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