Nashville singer-songwriter Kelly Hoppenjans has released a new single titled “Stain”, taken from her upcoming EP Can’t Get The Dark Out.
Hoppenjan’s characteristic blend of grunge-y 90s rock and introspective singer-songwriter is present in the music, while the album art is based on a retro 50s aesthetic, evoking themes of home, love, and nostalgia.
The accompanying music video for “Stain” is directed by Crystal Bowersox, of American Idol fame, with visual artist Samantha Zaruba also featured in the video pouring paint on Kelly.
Speaking about the song, Kelly Hoppenjans said, “This song is a direct follow-up to one of my singles from my 2019 album, ‘Band-Aid Girl’, which is about trying to love and heal a broken person who doesn’t love you back.
Touring with that album and singing lines like ‘If you burn me, it’s a little bit my fault’, over and over again put me back in the place that I was when I wrote the song, which wasn’t a happy one. I decided to write a song, inspired by the same relationship, that I could perform after “Band-Aid Girl” to lift me out of that funk.
The first line I wrote for the song was ‘Clothing keeps a memory, it sets in like a stain’. Sometimes I’ll get a line and I won’t know what it means yet, and I’ll just mull it over for months and months.
It suddenly hit me that I could be talking about the skirt I wore the night that the guy I was dating invited me and his ex-girlfriend to the same show, which is the night I finally ended it with him. I still had that skirt up until very recently, when I dripped paint all over it while making the music video for this song! It was a pretty cathartic experience“.
Watch her music video of “Stain” below:
#Peace.Love.Stain
