Yeah, ‘Brat’ was good and all, but if we’re being honest, Charlie XCX was keeping the seat for ‘Most iconic music moment of 2024’ warm while Tove Lo and Dom Dolla were busy teasing their new single across stages from Coachella to Ibiza. This morning, after a long stint over summer it was finally time for her to renounce the crown and hand it over to everyone’s teen-angst icon Tove Lo and DJ-Daddy Dom Dolla for the release of their collaborative track ‘Cave’.
In a recent chat about the duo’s latest drop, Dom said, “Tove and I have been mates for a few years now, I think we are both surprised it’s taken us this long to get in the studio together. Late last year we were at a party in LA and made a pact to finally make some magic. Cave ended up being the first idea we finished after our first session. Collaboration is easy when you’re working with great people who share a vision. I used to play a lot of shows in New Zealand in the early days of my career. Drum and Bass has always had a timeless place in the scene there and it rubbed off on me as a youngster. I took the influence with me everywhere. After playing an evening of house/techno at clubs in the US, I used to love closing the night out with a DnB record or two. Even if it was simply an energetic escalation and the audience I was playing it to didn’t understand it at the time. Fast forward to 2024, the genre has exploded, and it’s understood by all. I love that there are no rules anymore. I hope you like Cave as much as we do!”
Digging deeper into the new belter and her debut dabble into D&B (which has us absolutely gagged, btw) Tove Lo commented, “Cave is the very first song I and Dom wrote together. We’d been good mates for a while and decided to try a session when we were both in LA between tours. Very low pressure had no idea we were gonna come up with this belter. When I got to the studio Dom asked me “How do you feel about making some D&B?”. I answered, “That makes me excited”. He played me a barebones version of the track, pretty much just the main synth in the verses and some of the chorus drums. We started riffing on melodies and quickly had it down. I took the track home with me and worked on the lyrics. I felt like the chords and the beat had this haunted but sexy energy about it. It was giving the hot toxic ex you’re not over. So, I decided to tell that story. We recorded what should have been the final vocal in Melbourne until Dom decided that the key of the song wasn’t right for the bassline. It needed to be way lower to really hit the sweet spot. Obviously, that made it tricky to pick what kind of vocal performance we wanted out of me, so we actually ended up recording two different keys and doing a round of votes with friends, and various music nerds we trust. Luckily the votes were very unanimous. Cut to me and Dom being high-fashion vampire slayers together. So excited for Cave to be out in the world!”
The accompanying music video directed by Grant Spanier is set for release at 5PM today and let us tell you, the visuals are insane. Expect to see a leather-clad Tove Lo and crossbow-bearing Dom Dolla, trippy 360 forest visuals, smokey rave scenes and an overall eerie aesthetic that couldn’t be more aligned with spooky season…