Growing up in Victoria, B.C., Sophia Stel first proved herself within the city’s local DIY scene, captivating her peers with woozy, no-holds-barred lyricism and off-the-cuff visuals made with a digicam. She’s just announced her sophomore EP, How To Win At Solitaire, which is out Sept. 5, and shared the new single “Taste.”
Like the rest of the EP, “Taste” was recorded and produced in a makeshift basement studio of Paradise, the bar she worked at in Vancouver while wading through the messiness of a breakup. Over the years, Paradise became a source of profound creativity for Stel, tripling as a rehearsal room, recording studio, and second home. Naturally, the “Taste” video is a proper sendoff to the space, featuring footage that looks just as foggy as the morning after.
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“We threw a party at Paradise, and it was the last night we could party at the club that I worked at,” Stel tells AP. “That place was so important to me, because I made the whole project there, and it was such a time because all of the people in the video, we’d be there together on the weekends, and those are really important memories to me. Six different people were filming, and a bunch of people had cameras, and I got everyone to send me the footage afterward, and then we spliced it all together. We ended up spending most of the budget on alcohol, and the liquor store gave me a VIP card because we spent like $1,000, so now I get really good discounts.”
Stel recently announced her first-ever headlining European tour this fall, which begins Nov. 7 at Pitchfork Festival in Paris.
See the patchwork video, made with Aaron Lum and Scarlet Ross, below.