Boy Deluxe Infuses Haunting Synths and Powerful Meditations in “Left Behind”
“You didn't realize how small you were until you left. It’s like that sentiment where I’m so much bigger than that person, and I’m so much better than her,” says Hope Murra of dark-pop duo Boy Deluxe.
The powerful manifestation of affirming oneself and overcoming past grief has come into full fruition for Boy Deluxe (Hope and True Murra) as they return with a brand new music video for last year's single "Left Behind." The track is a moody, mid-tempo electronic ballad that examines the complex emotions of feeling special yet overlooked. “Left Behind” interlaces haunting synths, shimmering soundscapes and introspective confessionals that portray a picture of the struggle to find one’s place in a world that often dismisses what makes us special and authentic in the first place.
“‘Left Behind’ conveys a sense of hope and resilience, reminding listeners to never give up on the pursuit of their true selves,” Hope says. “‘Left Behind' is a powerful meditation on the beauty of individuality and the strength it takes to shine in a world that often fails to see our true worth."
In 2021, Boy Deluxe shared an EP titled Risen. Suddenly finding themselves in the midst of chaos and change, the band's best way of coping with the world around them was by writing and creating. From the deep pain of personal loss to the daily stress of survival, Boy Deluxe transmuted a year and half of grief into their best work yet. From reflections on ending a relationship ("All Out"), to commentary on the rampant greed in our society ("Silver Silver"), to a story of women going to New York City to get branded and initiated into a secret cult ("Cult Status"), and an anthem on personal power ("Im the Blood"), Risen encompasses the duo's experience in unprecedented times.
"The songs on Risen are a reflection of the grief, loss and outrage felt during the pandemic, but they're also songs about finding yourself, hope and rebirth," Hope says.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Thank you so thank you for sitting down and talking to Unpublished Magazine. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. Can you tell us about what inspires your artistic persona and style?
[HOPE]: I think we're both originally inspired by rock n’ roll and punk rock. I'm from Seattle. There's just like a natural crunchiness to that. We met in Seattle actually, and so we're always influenced by that. We also love hip-hop. Dr. Dre, his album The Chronic was one of the connecting albums for us.
[TRUE]: I grew up playing a lot of punk and noise stuff, and she grew up on a lot of Soul and Motown and that was her background when I met her and we didn't really know what the common ground was. We were like, ‘What's the common ground here?’ I just know I loved her voice and she liked the stuff I was writing, but we couldn't relate. We just wrote hundreds of songs that we didn’t even know the names of or had no idea how to play them and it was this process of being egoless about it and very natural. Instead of being like, ‘Hey, I always play punk, so we're gonna do punk music’ or she's like, ‘I sing a lot of neo-soul, so we're gonna do this.’ We just kept writing to each other, and we used to be in another project. We just evolved into this.
[HOPE]: I think we've also started to pull inspiration from a lot of different places as time goes on, like so many amazing artists from today have inspired us like crazy from Kendrick, Rihanna and Frank Ocean.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Who are some people that inspire you, doesn't have to be musicians.
[HOPE]: I’m inspired by the people I know. I’m obviously inspired by Nine Inch Nails and the record Halsey did with them, but I’m really inspired by a lot of my friends. We have this friend Bill Rieflin, he was like a mentor and our producer and he inspired me like crazy. We played a show the other night and we were talking to our buddy Dave and he inspired me a lot the other night. It's everybody. People who are genuine and who are doing their shit unapologetically, that inspires me, doesn't really matter who you are.
[TRUE]: The commitment is what inspires us. Reggie Watts was really inspiring early on because he was just so committed to a stick and was committed to what he was doing. Musically, it wasn't what we were doing and then that led me into being inspired by actors, just like watching acting and just seeing these people be so fucking committed to this thing and when it's genuine and real, and that's a constant source of conversation between Hope and I. Music in general and especially in LA, a lot of people want to be genuine but I don’t think they want to do it. I get inspired by actors and people being genuine and musicians that are genuine and that I believe that's really who they are.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What do you guys need in your space when you're feeling creative inspiration hitting you?
[HOPE]: Maybe for both of us, our gear has to be set up. I also need my space to be tidy and not cluttered. Our bedroom is our studio so I can’t work in cluttered environments.
[TRUE]: I like clutter a little differently. For me, I write every day no matter what, I'm always writing, always writing. I'm always writing to the point where it drives me crazy sometimes, but we've gotten a nice balance now. There was a long time where she was like, ‘I don't know what to work on because we have too much material,’ but now she realized, I just need to write, it's just something I do. I write all the time. I was so scared of having that writer's block or we're writing a record and needing a second record and not having any material. I've had friends go through that, and I think I was so paranoid that I just wanted to exercise. I write all the time, and I'm very attached to it in a way that I think you subscribe to that idea a bit too where it's just like it's not really us writing and it kind of comes through you like when you're really, really writing. I almost don’t remember writing a lot of songs.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How long have you guys been writing together?
[HOPE]: A really long time, I’m afraid to say it’s been 12 years.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What’s your favorite song to perform live and why?
[TRUE]: That's constantly changing. We just played this show and we realized the last time we played that venue, we had a completely different set. We were in this band in Seattle for a long time and our big thing was that we didn’t really release stuff, but we wrote all the time. One of our big things when we moved down here was like, we have to release, so we just tried to start releasing things all the time. I love “Left Behind,” which at the time I used to have so much disdain for pop growing up as a punk rock kid. We tried to write a pop song, but in our vision. Now I love it and I'm trying to understand pop, but it's very important that it's like in our world, that she can sing it and believe it and I can play it and believe it, it's not like we're just writing a song. We like the super grimy, heavy shit to play live, it’s so fun.
[HOPE]: We have this really cool cover of “SexyBack” by Justin Timberlake. It’s just really grimy and fucked up.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How would you describe the energy of your live performances?
[HOPE]: When all of the magical elements are aligned, when you have a good sound and a good room and a cool staff and a good crowd, when all the stars are aligned, I'd say our show is pretty high energy. I think it's fun. I'm having fun.
[TRUE]: When I was younger, I went to shows because it was visceral. It was cathartic and all this stuff where I play shows I feel like that and then there was this whole reason we had a different band and then we became this band was because we felt like that band became pandering in a way, not intentionally, but it became something that we didn’t even like doing anymore on some level. There was a spirit of we can do whatever we want no matter what anyone says that came in. One of the things that sucks about our band is we're very track heavy, like we run lots of tracks. So if it's a shitty room, it sounds shitty. It can still be kind of funky and noisy, but it's always better with a big system. We have a lot of fans that come and they know the words and they're really into it and then a lot of other people are just like why? and they don't leave. They stay there the whole time and they're just like, ‘I don't know what the fuck this, but alright.’ She’s incredible live, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to work with her and she goes crazy. When I met Hope, not trying to divulge too much, but she was a pretty angry person. She used to be super angry and now, she’s the most zen person I know.
[HOPE]: I just raged on stage because you can’t do it in real life, it’s not healthy, so I found a nice little outlet and I freaked out. So I'd say that for me, performance is very cathartic. It's a very cathartic experience. I have a lot of control issues in different ways in my life. I'm not crazy, my fun is crazy. But, my point is being on stage, that's kind of like the one place that I really get to have the space and the safety to let go. So for me, I'd say the energy is also cathartic.
[UNPUBLISHED]: The staple song “Left Behind” from the EP incorporates a lot of pop elements, but from your own perspective. What was the inspiration and creative process behind the single?
[HOPE]: I remember talking to my mom, I know I'd had a phone conversation with her and we were probably talking about the family shit in a therapeutic way. I have been talking to mom about life stuff, family stuff and I just had this conversation in my mind. I guess for me lyrically, it was kind of what I always wish she would have said to my dad, they broke up and that's fine and whatever like they're both cool. I just know that I had talked to my mom and I felt genuinely overlooked and like starting to stand your ground and like you're so much bigger than you realized. I'm sure you've had situations with people in your life relationships where it's like, you didn't realize how small you were until you left it. It’s like that sentiment where I’m so much bigger than that person, and I’m so much better than her. I don’t remember writing that song at all.
[TRUE]: That makes a lot of sense, but a lot of times I'll have ideas like when I'm writing like vocal ideas or lyric ideas, but I really try to leave everything up. I don't want to corrupt her idea if she comes in with an idea and we have a chorus idea together and work from there. We do this thing sometimes called marathon music Fridays where we just write out our ideas, no matter what it can be, good songs, bad songs or whatever. We wrote “Left Behind” in a blur of music marathon Fridays. We're just writing all the time. We write a bunch of stuff and then I like work to do production all week and then we get back in on Friday. We live together too, so we can like track vocals all the time.
[UNPUBLISHED]: “Left Behind” also has an accompanying music video. What was the inspiration behind the video and how was your experience filming that?
[HOPE]: The inspiration kind of circles back around to the concept of being overlooked and knowing that you’re spectacular, but that you’re in this mundane thing. The concept behind it was having me wearing this weird fucking outfit. You see, you have this spectacular outfit and person in terms of spectacular, in the way of what your eyes see like it's wow that's a lot and I'm going to work and I have like a fuckin visor on.
[TRUE]: I just wanted her to do the most mundane shit like being in an outrageous outfit. Not funny, but almost funny. We were kind of trying to push the director and wanted to push a cooler concept from an original rough idea.
[HOPE]: We kind of wanted it to be a little more like guerrilla around the city and getting weird shots, like my favorite part of that video is that we’re in a grocery store and I’m shopping and pushing a cart and doing weird shit. It was shot in Hollywood and no one paid attention to us because they’re probably used to having people film the most mundane shit.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Since your 2021 EP release Risen, how have you experimented more, either lyrically or sonically, and been taking any new risks?
[HOPE]: I found that we're always growing and expanding and voice building for every song that we released, there's 10 behind it that we don't release and behind those 10 there's another 10 to 20 songs. I think these releases are different than Risen and I think True’s production has grown so much since Risen. He does a lot of incredible things, especially a lot of the new tracks that we have that we're going to release in 2023. I'm really excited about that. He writes nasty shit, and I think for me, lyrically, I'm kind of naturally, not all the time, but I'm naturally moving into a place where I'm experimenting with writing about other people more than myself, which is great. We're kind of selfish as people and artists and it's nice to be tired of my own stuff. I definitely think I'm finding more inspiration from outside me instead of my emotional world.
[TRUE]: We’ve also been collaborating a lot more with rappers and been doing a lot more collaborations in general. It’s interesting writing with rappers because they'll just have these versus flexing about how dope they are and we just don't write like that, and I think it's been really good for us though, because honestly, like the supernova line and shit like that, we never would have written that before we were working with rappers because it it's always so indie and up our own ass and we're just like writing songs is cool and it’s fun to explore. We get in our own way and I think Risen, as much as I love a lot of those songs, a lot of it's like we're sorting something out at that time and then working with some other people has helped us.
[HOPE]: It was also just a different place. We wrote a lot of those songs in lockdown in 2020 and we had a lot of time between ourselves to work on those things and also with our mix engineer to collaborate. Back then, our production and the things we had access to were different than what we have now. We’ve built a lot more on our gear and a lot of our sounds and tones have changed in production.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You guys produce and write your songs pretty much independently. What is some advice you wish you could give your younger selves or wish someone have given you guys in terms of navigating the music industry independently?
[HOPE]: I think if I could go back, I would remind myself to have fun and that I'm my worst critic. Success isn't what you think that it is. I don't mean like you get there and it's not what you think it is. I mean, because that can be true, like being careful what you wish for. I just mean like the idea of success is a little bit different now that I've I don't know I'm a little older, I think I tell myself to not be so precious and to have fun and be gentler with myself not put too much pressure on myself.
[TRUE]: I was thinking about the week we started in Seattle, we got pretty big really quick in hindsight. It was easy and we didn’t even have to think about it. There were a lot of catches to it, like we were selling out rooms but no one was listening to us. We were wondering what the disconnect was. We started to realize that we were a live band, not a band you listen to. You got to come to see Hope crowd surfing everyone to freak out. That was a hard truth we had to face and that we had to write better songs. We moved down here [LA] and it was crazy, because we would play for over 500 people in Seattle and only six here. It was crazy humbling, I didn't even know how humbling and how much it fucked with us until years later. The conversation we've been having all the time lately is about success and what that means and it's like we're not successful as musicians if the barometer is how much money you're making, but that being said, we have a bunch of friends that play in huge bands that are like not fucking happy at all. I don't know what I don't even know what success is to me anymore. It's been so confusing. My advice I could give to myself would be to do art for art’s sake, like you just have to make the art you want to make and no matter what fucking happens happens, just go for it. Also, eradicate the shame around not being a successful quote unquote musician. I can't speak for everybody, but I know I fight with that, being ashamed that I've been doing this for this long, like I should be further along. Everybody's path is different dude, and especially in an age with cell phones and Instagram and Tiktok, like you can't compare yourself to anybody else.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What can listeners expect from this new era of yours?
[HOPE]: We've got a handful of songs we're going to be putting out this year, so they’re heavy. We have a flair for heaviness and moodiness. We’re still like that, but at a faster pace. We got some banners on the way, hot and loose.
[TRUE]: We have some cool collaborations coming out with rappers we’re excited to feature.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would love to share with Unpublished?
[TRUE]: I'm really excited about the material. We wrote all these songs at the end of last year and then we were like, well, I don't think it's gonna matter but everyone's always like, don't put it out in November and December or January because the whole industry shuts down. I feel that's like a dated thing. We held on to everything. I think it's our best stuff. For us, the pandemic was this incredible opportunity to just write all the time and we grew a lot, and I think that’s reflected in the stuff we’re writing now.
[HOPE]: I’m really excited for this next chapter this year and I think it’s our best stuff yet and I hope everybody likes it as much as we do.
