The Motifs return with a new 12" EP.
If This House Was Bigger is the sound of growing up quietly, even when it feels like the world around you is moving too fast.
In late 2024, Singaporean shoegaze/dream-pop outfit motifs travelled halfway across the world to Sundlaugin Studios in Iceland. For eight days, the band lived, breathed, and built songs together under one roof, far from home, surrounded by mountains, mist, and snow. It was a rare kind of headspace: no schedules, no city noise, just music.
If their debut album, ' Remember a Stranger, ' looked back with hazy nostalgia, 'If This House Was Bigger' feels different. It's heavier in places. More open-ended. It reflects that "early adulthood fog" -- the push and pull between regrets and hopes, the moments you realise your parents were once your age too, the weight of the life you haven't lived yet.
Across five tracks, motifs expand their sonic palette without losing their emotional core. From the glistening slow-burn of "Heavy Is The Air" (written in a moment of reflection by a river that never froze) to the lo-fi tenderness of "Later On," the EP hums with a quiet urgency. There are flashes of home, long car rides under the northern sky, late-night conversations by the fire. It's music that feels both intimate and wide open -- like someone humming a secret you already know.
