The Dove & The Wolf | photo by Colin Kerrigan | courtesy of the artist
Stream a new song from The Dove and The Wolf called “The Smell of Us”
Duality is something that seems innately tied to The Dove & The Wolf. It’s in their name, it’s reflected in their sense of home (songwriters Paloma and Lou are French citizens who are now based in Philadelphia) and it courses through the themes of their songs. We hear some of that duality on “The Smell of Us,” a song taken from the duo’s forthcoming I Don’t Know How to Feel EP.
Produced by familiar faces Dave Hartley and Nick Krill, “The Smell of Us” has a breezy, tropical sound that floats the harmonies of Paloma and Lou as they explore contradicting feelings of wanting things to stay the same while knowing they have to change.
The track was premiered on Stereogum, where the band explained the circumstances of the lyrics:
‘The Smell of Us’ is about spending a night with someone, and knowing your relationship with that person will never be the same after it because all you have for certain is that moment, but wanting to give yourself to them as if your time together wasn’t so fragile. We wrote it after spending 5 months in Paris knowing that we could be moving back to the US any day, the moment we got the news our visas were accepted. And during this big gap of waiting, we met people, we felt things that didn’t want to be contained within such a finite box of time, and it might sound cheesy but we realized that we didn’t want to waste our time not following what we love—we have to just love each other, even if that’s going to be it. This song is about knowing that you can’t expect more from this person [you’re starting to fall for / or / you wish you could hold on to] because you can’t promise more than that night, but wanting to risk giving yourself to that night anyway, because feeling it is worth it.
The Dove & The Wolf celebrate the release of I Don’t Know How to Feel at Johnny Brenda’s on June 15th; tickets and information for the 21+ show can be found here. Listen to the single below.