KVDE is an artist from Dallas, Texas, who creates electronic-based hard rock with metalcore influences. His songs have high-energy, catchy hooks that helped him gain a following independently, with 2.5 million streams across his discography of seven releases at the time, giving him an independently built stream count of over 4 million before signing to The Artery Foundation recently.
On May 15th, KVDE released his single "Damage," and it's catchy, heavy, and everything I could have hoped for from a KVDE track!
There's a nice balance of all the different genres that are blended to make his sound. The vocals are a good blend of cleans and harshes, making the music accessible, even to audiences who aren't into a lot of harsher vocals on their playlists. The production is really beautifully done as well, creating a well-rounded track!
"Damage" is a song that goes deep and covers the topic of self-victimization. "This song explores the idea of creating your own destruction while convincing yourself it's everyone else's fault. It came from watching people in my life repeat those patterns while I was trying to grow out of them myself. You reach a point where you want to help them do the same, but you realize they’re the only ones capable of changing themselves, and that frustration is what this song is built on." KVDE explained the meaning and reason for the track.
With lyrics like, "Every time you start to sink / The sea belongs to anyone but you / Sad you never stop to think / The consequence is who you've turned into," you can tell a lot of emotion was poured into this song. I think a lot of us can relate to knowing someone who is like that, or having known someone, and to the impact of this track lyrically. This makes it easy to connect on a scale of tracks you can play to have fun jamming along to, and with emotionally relatable songs, which is honestly not as easy as it might seem to execute.
This track overall feels like a win for KVDE. It's something that can be played on the radio, and that has to have really great energy live. It literally carries the energy in from the start, and that is a great quality to have in your music. When you can create music that takes people out of their day and brings them into just the music for the duration of the single, that is the ability to write a hit... And KVDE has just that.
If we're picking bangers from artists on the climb, I would say "Damage" is a top track pick for this year in my mind! His sound is great and in an area of the alternative music scene that's doing really well right now. I can see him coming into the big leagues and having built himself up like he was able to before he brought on a team; I can only imagine how fast the climb will be now!
