Nick Hakim – “Bouncing”

Daniel Regan

Nick Hakim – “Bouncing”

Daniel Regan

Later this week, the idiosyncratic New York soul musician Nick Hakim will follow up his 2017 debut Green Twins with a new album called Will This Make Me Good. We’ve already posted the early tracks “Qadir” and “Crumpy.” Today, he’s come out with a video for the slow, blurry new single “Bouncing.”

“Bouncing” is a song about nervous energy — “I’ve been tryna find peace/ ‘Cause I’ve been bouncing off the walls, and I can’t sleep — but it takes its time. Hakim purrs over woozy, gooey psychedelic soul production that reminds me of screwed-and-chopped Prince. You know that is something you want to hear at least once. In a press release, Hakim says the song is “a sound bath where I wrote about one of the coldest days in New York I remember, while lying in my bed, restless by a radiator.”

Hakim appears in the video, in which director Nelson Nance weaves an allegory about the way we process art. A statue comes to life in a gallery, dancing for a group of phone-clutching onlookers, before attempting to find some kind of independence. Check it out below.

Will This Make Me Good is out 5/15 via ATO. Pre-order it here.

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