Nothing is Better Than the First-Date Kiss — Rare DM Returns in Her Video for “Skater Hits Me Harder”

Skater hits me harder

You didn’t make the cut

He throws me down

After I get him up

There is a chill to frivolous trysts, a kind of frosted dance where flesh meets – but souls never quite mingle. In contrast to romantic ballads and passionate professions of love and devotion, coldwave’s icy pulse ironically captures that “fun” — a staccato, passionless rhythm of restless hands and vacant eyes, heartbeats echoing with no real anchor. It’s the sound of hollow intimacy, where each connection slips away like vapour, lost before it’s ever found; a union of moments that swiftly evaporate into memory.

Rare DM’s Skater Hits Me Harder whispers of carefree collisions, moments spent chasing heat in a landscape of emotional frost. It embodies the fleeting, electric hunger of youth, yet beneath the sheen, there’s a sense of emptiness—a yearning for something more, something real, that remains forever out of reach. The lyrics – and Erin Hoagg’s droll, disembodied delivery of them – describes playful, rough encounters with a skater, evoking a sense of nostalgia and excitement reminiscent of the thrill of high school experiences.

The sentiment dances lightly, flirtatious and brazen, a bold celebration of momentary pleasure—brief sparks without strings, quick thrills with no depth. Yet lurking beneath is something colder: a dehumanizing of desire, stripping away tenderness, leaving only practiced technique and the empty art of moving on. Where, we wonder, is the love we crave? The satisfaction of a deeper connection? Where lies the warmth that makes us whole? In these fleeting encounters, pleasure may flash bright, but the heart remains untouched, yearning for something that lingers beyond the surface. Hoagg captures this imbalance perfectly – it is an anthem for the Tinder generation; the promising GGGs who end up Ghost-Ghost-Ghosting. Skater is better, simply because sensuality is the secret ingredient of sexuality.

“Skater Hits Me Harder is about banging someone and wanting to do it again, and about realizing that your last lover really sucked,” says Hoagg. “But the feeling behind the song is that nothing is better than that first-date kiss—someone holding your hand for the first time. When you don’t know if the date is going well, but you have butterflies and are kinda nervous but then they grab your hand and you make out against fences on the way back to your apartment.”

The video, directed by Calvin Stark, shows that dance of seduction in the streets of NYC. Hoagg herself wavers between fantasy and fact; reality and dream – the dance we navigate in our own minds with each encounter.

Watch the video for Skater Hits Me Harder Below:

Rare DM has shared the stage with Molchat Doma, Drab Majesty, and Model/Actriz,

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