AVIV is a 15-year-old Toronto singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who sings nostalgic and gloomy D.I.Y. pop. In her most “You Feel Like Depression,” the singer delves into the diverse emotions of self-guilt, self-blame, and an overall sense of failure.
Releasing the animated visuals for the track AVIV explains her choice “the song captures a lullaby-like, reminiscing verse. I like the innocence and nostalgia associated with this verse and wanted to reflect that into the video by using child-like cartoons.”
She says “I’m just a teenager who acts much older, still gets excited about little things, and really loves to over-analyze her emotions and put them into music… I try to be true to myself with everything I do. The more AVIV the music is, the better.”
AVIV grew up in a large family with four siblings, and every Saturday, she and her siblings went record shopping on Queen Street in Toronto, where “other families went to the mall,” she chuckles. “As a group, we went to the record store.” At the age of six, she began learning piano, honing her voice, and eventually taking up a guitar. As she consistently played her early compositions for friends and family, her everyday poems blossomed into songs. She was obsessed with Clairo, Lorde, and Lana Del Rey throughout high school. “They’re my three mothers,” she says jokingly.
“I began as a music lover, surrounded by family members who forced good music taste.”
The sensation in her latest track “You Feel Like Depression” is heightened when the person with whom you’ve broken up blames you for the split AVIV admits. With each of her songs, AVIV maintains sensations you never want to lose.
We ask AVIV, your new single “You Feel Like Depression”, is about self-guilt, self-blame within breakups, can you let us know what it was like producing this track?
Her response was “I collaborated on it with Liam Kevany, an incredible writer. It was originally a sorrowful slow song that we wrote on guitar. We didn’t think this version of the song captured the frustrations and emotions we were looking for. We then presented it to producer Rian Lewis, and the three of us spent an entire day testing out various ideas till we felt happy with them. The song ended up with different time signatures and speeds, back and forth – something I had never done before.”
As we discover AVIV’s talent, aesthetics and get feel for her music with recent visuals for AVIV’s single “You Feel Like Depression”, get drawn into her fresh ideas around D.I.Y pop.