Eves Karydas today shares her valiant second studio album, Burnt Tapes, on the heels of her east coast tour starting tonight in Naarm / Melbourne. LISTEN TO BURNT TAPES HERE.

Burnt Tapes arrives for Karydas as a proudly self-managed and independently releasing artist. A courageous departure from the voice we’ve come to know behind the name, Eves Karydas re-introduces her sound, image and narrative. Inspired and empowered by her own creative direction and control, Burnt Tapes prioritises the process above all else. Of the album Eves Karydas shares “This album is a testament to how I see the world, how I hear the world, and what I love. It took cutting off the outside world and all outside opinions to find my spark again – and I couldn’t be happier with the way the album turned out.”

Returning to her fruitful production collaboration with Chris Zane from her debut album summerskin, responsible for putting Eves Karydas on the map with ARIA-Platinum single ‘Further Than The Planes Fly’, Eves embedded herself within the esteemed songwriting community in Stockholm, cultivating a consistent source of inspiration in her evolving sound – most notably with her 2022 single ‘Complicated’, that reaped ongoing success as the most added song to commercial radio, #22 in triple j’s Hottest 100 through to placement on BBC Radio 1’s Best New Pop.

Since first composing at age 11, frequent travel to Stockholm to write enabled Eves to elevate her technical prowess, and further collaborations with Jens Resch triggered sessions for today’s release. Harvesting a now-proven combination of pop smarts and edgy songwriting talent, Burnt Tapes sees her repurpose tasteful nostalgia into a renewed alternative indie sphere for Karydas. Stretching her winning pop sound with the record collection of her upbringing and the boundary pushing vocalists challenging the zeitgeist – Suki Waterhouse to Lana del Rey – today she presents an all new range of sound, with drippings of psychedelia, RNB, soul, electronica and more.

Joining her triumphant string of singles in the yacht-rock, chillwave hybrid ‘Sunday Drive’, the direct ‘Girlboss’ in contrast to playful ‘Take 2’ and her most true-to-form display of musicality on ‘Hair Down’ includes title track, where Kardyas imagined “spilling my secrets to a mostly empty bar of strangers”; the melodramatic yet acutely self aware ‘Call Me’, recounting love’s ultimate tragedy when someone just isn’t that into you; to situationships and all their grey areas get unpacked across ‘Sideways’.

‘Best Light’ shows the extent of Karydas’ contemporary recalibrations of sentimental sounds, thrusting synth pop into the present, where ‘Save Me For A Saturday’ wistfully soundtracks what Eves describes as walking down “a pokey alleyway somewhere vaguely European in the summer and hear music floating out of a tucked away bistro that has tables, chairs and striped umbrellas out on the curb.” Best amplifying the message of her album, pushing through the experiences that shape – not break – us, is closer ‘Weird Energy / Thick Of It’, where Karydas presents a hopeful yet assertive demonstration of the woman she is now.

Despite her early success, Eves Karydas faced periods of uncertainty in 2019 to 2023. Re-emerging with a renewed sense of autonomy and purpose earlier this year, the songwriter-vocalist has reconstructed indignant burnout and frustration into her “most authentic” image yet (triple j). Throughout the album, Kardyas’ airy soprano tone glides across real instrumentation, recorded live one room over five weeks amongst as much analogue gear as possible. Just one of the many extensions of music, and overall creative direction, Eves has seized back into her own hands.

Burnt Tapes is a stoic milestone of resilience together with an exploratory re-examination of her craft. Dedicated to artistic integrity and authenticity, throughout the campaign Karydas has been vocal about just how transformative Burnt Tapes, and the journey to its release, has been for her career and individual spirit already. Seizing back control of her virtuosity and her own path forward – a courageous departure musically from the Eves Karydas we have come to know – the inspired re-introduction to her sound, image and narrative is a tribute to her own unwavering self-belief and resilience.