Toronto-based singer songwriter Madisyn Whajne has released “Killing Desire” the second single from her debut full length album Save Our Hearts due November 13.
“Killing Desire is a punk song at heart,” says Whajne. “It turned into a fierce but dreamy indie pop song about finding hope when all seemed lost. In between the lines there is lust and desire, a love and a loss; pulling someone in closer but ultimately walking away. I am inspired from bands like the Go’s Go’s and the Vaccines; but like most songs, it took on a life of its own. We shot the video in the back alleys of Toronto and at E5 studios in the west end of the city. It was a two person crew so we had fun and made the best of things!”
Recorded live to tape at Montreal’s famed Hotel2Tango Studio with engineers Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, The Barr Brothers) and Shae Brossard(Bahamas, The Dears), the forthcoming album is imbued with a visceral sense of loneliness and longing, a burning desire for connection and companionship that propels it endlessly forward in pursuit of something perpetually out of reach. While Whajne (pronounced Wayne) rarely tackles her tumultuous journey in explicit narrative terms, her story is written between the lines here as she navigates love and trust, reunion and rejection, faith and fate.
Backed by her band and longtime friends—producer Jay McBride on bass, James Gray on guitar, and her husband, Bobby Bulat, on drums—Whajne walks a delicate tightrope between indie rock charm and punk bravado on the album, balancing hope and despair in equal measure as gritty guitars and muscular percussion mix with dreamy production and intoxicating hooks. The result is a captivating collection that hints at everything from Alvvays and Snail Mail to Rilo Kiley and Real Estate, an invigorating, bittersweet debut that insists on resilience and survival in the face of pain and heartbreak.
Whajne has spent most of her life searching: for her purpose, for her family, for herself. Taken from her parents before the age of two as part of the infamous Sixties Scoop, in which the Canadian government forcibly rehomed tens of thousands of native children, the indigenous artist grew up without ever knowing her real name, to say nothing of her heritage. As a result, Whajne’s life has been shaped by a hunger for truth and understanding, a hunger that lies at the core of her extraordinary debut, Save Our Hearts.
