An abundance of quality songwriting has emerged over the past several months from Hotel Leo, the alias of Kansas City-based musician Stephen Roper. Bridging aspects of dream-pop, synth-pop, rock, and lo-fi, the project excels with a consistently melodic and moody allure.
Released back in March, “Mechanical” embraces a dream-pop styling, thematically reflecting on the comprehension of emotional distance. “I woke up to the news, feeling everything change,” Roper’s vocals let out amidst bouncy bass and glistening synths, opening with immersive enthrallment. The heartrending, sympathetic lyricism pairs with a magnetic synth-pop and dream-pop synergy. Roper wrote the track after the sudden loss of his brother. “In the immediate aftermath, I wasn’t emotional in the way I felt I should be, while everyone around me seemed devastated, I felt strangely cold and disconnected, like I wasn’t grieving the way I was supposed to,” he says. “The song lives in that unsettling space of feeling emotionally absent during a moment that should have broken you open.”
Releasing about a month later, “Just A Rumor” represents the third single from Hotel Leo’s upcoming album. Its production combines ghostly synth tones and harmonious vocal introspection, set within “thoughts of infinity, mortality, and the strange panic that comes along with it.” “I’m giving anything to wake up,” the vocals beckon, arriving into a melodic “but I never lied” shift. The track excels in both its melodic drive and late-night atmospherics.
Also enamoring is the most recently released single “Notes In The Door,” the most guitar-friendly of this trio of tracks, dazzling as well in its bright vocal layers. Wonderful synths coexist here, too, as they do in all three of these gems. The lush synth arpeggios and dreamy vocals build enjoyably into doses of guitar past the one-minute turn, continuing to coexist with dream-pop synths within the “I want to know, your sign, your eyes…” yearning. These three excellent tracks have us firmly anticipating Hotel Leo’s upcoming album.
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These and other tracks featured this month can be streamed on the updating Obscure Sound’s ‘Emerging Singles’ Spotify playlist.
