NEW MODELS DUE OUT OCTOBER 9, 2025 VIA TWIN FANG RECORDS
WATCH / SHARE “WHEN I’M OVERCOME” LYRIC VIDEO
BUY / STREAM “WHEN I’M OVERCOME” HERE
PRE-SAVE NEW MODELS HERE
Photo Credit : Paul Mpagi Sepuya // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
‘When I’m overcome with feeling / I have to break free from words and just sing.’ An inveterate writer, Vivek Shraya knows that fewer words can carry more weight. These first lines of her new album, New Models, serve as both a thesis to the transcendent sonic experience to come, as well as an invitation to leave the burden of self-assuredness at the door. Don’t overthink—just listen. Just feel.
Set for release on October 9, 2025, New Models is “me grappling with the state of the world over the past four years and eventually realizing that language, particularly English, had become so contorted and weaponized that the only way I could grieve, rage, and find comfort was to let go of it,” says Shraya. “How do you express the horror and helplessness of witnessing progress being rapidly undone—in words—when all you want to do is scream or cry?
Today, Shraya is the album’s open track and thesis statement, “When I’m Overcome”, a song that began as wordless vocalizations sung through a vocoder which “pushed me in a whole new direction because of how it allowed my voice to expand, multiply and take up space—like a different kind of scream or cry,” says Shraya. “‘When I’m Overcome’ was the first song I built through these explorations and became a blueprint for the songwriting on the rest of the album.”
WATCH / SHARE “WHEN I’M OVERCOME” LYRIC VIDEO
BUY / STREAM “WHEN I’M OVERCOME” HERE
MORE ABOUT VIVEK SHRAYA AND NEW MODELS
The multi-hyphenate Shraya has dedicated much of her impressive artistic career to incisively articulating culturally loaded issues. Whether through her best-selling book I’m Afraid To Talk To Men (which Vanity Fair called “cultural rocket fuel”), her award-winning play-turned-CBC show, How To Fail As A Popstar, or her provocative visual art and installation work, Shraya has challenged the status quo by transcending her personal experiences into daring artworks. But it is music that first drew Shraya into the arts, and it’s on her 11th solo album, New Models, that Shraya redefines her musical trajectory with a bold display of boundary pushing done right.
This collection of hypnotically textured songs allows each listener to come to their own conclusions about the heavy subjects she conjures. Dread, disconnection, uncertainty—all are invoked through Shraya’s sparse, cutting lyrics, but it is her wordless vocal chanting that cuts the deepest. “How do you express—in words—the horror and helplessness of witnessing progress being rapidly undone,” Shraya explains, “when all you want to do is scream or cry?”
For New Models, Shraya joined forces with long-time producer-engineer James Bunton (Donovan Woods, Celeigh Cardinal, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson). Shraya and Bunton connected a decade ago, when Shraya realized the notion of the self-producing “solo genius” was profoundly flawed, and her and Bunton have grown to share a deep bond and a common language, with Bunton producing most of Shraya’s recent music, from Part-Time Woman, her album with Queer Songbook Orchestra (2017) to her previous full-length album Baby, You’re Projecting (2023, Mint Records) and the subsequent duet versions of songs from that album with Jann Arden and Donovan Woods.
For Shraya, the key to their partnership is that Bunton really challenges her: “the challenges and questions he poses are always different with each project, which keeps things fresh.” For this project, Bunton pushed Shraya to experiment considerably on her own before the two started actively collaborating. “I found this quite difficult and lonely,” Shraya admits, “but in the end, this resulted in a kind of exploration and play that I haven’t tapped into since my 20s. There was a two-week period where I spent every evening demoing from 6pm–11pm, and it was such a generative and joyful experience!” By the time Shraya and Bunton were sharing project files back and forth, building upon one another’s ideas, the distinctive sound of New Models was set. “An exciting part of the process was letting the songs themselves reveal to us where they were supposed to live production-wise,” says Bunton, “instead of letting any of our predeterminations get in the way.”
Overflowing with creative freedom, New Models presents each song as its own world in which listeners can get lost. “Apathy Crisis”, for instance, transforms into a maximalist, glitchy soundscape—à la SOPHIE—only to dissolve into an intimate voice and synth pairing for an intimate send-off: ‘how do you sleep at night? / ‘cause I can’t sleep at night.’ Haunting songs like “We’re in Pain” and “Groomer” burst with off-kilter percussion and bending synths. All the while, electronic vocal gymnastics make Shraya’s passionate voice feel infinite. The music sounds as searching as the themes it touches upon: “Am I Doing Enough?” carries, as Shraya puts it, the “ache of forever falling short,” and the stunning “Moral Panic” ends with Shraya repeating the mantra: ‘We can’t go there / There’s so much to feel.’
Vivek Shraya’s artistic practice has long been unrelentingly honest. She has never shied away from difficult feelings, whether harassment – her graphic novel with Ness Lee, Death Threat – professional jealousy – as she explores on her podcast, I Won’t Envy – or chronic pain – as in her new short film, Bodyrebuilding. What’s special about New Models is its insistence on moving through all the feelings possible. While no answers are uncovered, a deep desire for reconstruction and reconstitution glimmers. As Shraya intones, “everything works, until it doesn’t”—but just as crucially, “Everything hurts, until it doesn’t.” - Sam Boer
VIVEK SHRAYA TOUR DATES
June 6 - Toronto, ON - Hart House
June 28 - Toronto, ON - Pride Toronto
July 10 - Vancouver, BC - Indian Summer Festival
January 30 - Calgary, AB - Jack Singer Concert Hall w/ The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra
PRE-SAVE NEW MODELS HERE
NEW MODELS TRACKLIST
01 When I’m Overcome
02 Apathy Crisis
03 We’re In Pain
04 Groomer
05 Breaking Our Pattern
06 Moral Panic
07 Am I Doing Enough?
08 I Don’t Know Where I’m Going
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