The independent Asian-American musician boywithahalo is back with a touching new single, “bittersweet girl,” a song that sounds as personal as a late-night journal entry and as sprawling as a hazy daydream. Written during a yearlong stay in China at the pandemic’s peak, the song started small with a novice’s guitar and unvarnished iPhone voice memos before taking shape inside FL Studio.
That tradition of DIY is integrated into the “bittersweet girl” DNA. There’s a warmth in its imperfections, and a quiet immediacy that hearkens back to the bedroom-pop confessional style of artists like girl in red, beabadoobee, and Clairo. But where those references end, boywithahalo picks up, adding their own otherworldly charm and emotional conviction to a story about the thrill and ache of young love. The track plays to duality, joy cut with melancholy, sweetness underlined by sorrow. It reflects the universal tension of adolescence and self-discovery, when love seems both limitless and breakable. Dreamy guitar lines drift over hazy production. The result is a sensual but soft mood that feels frozen in time.
For boywithahalo, “bittersweet girl” represents growth, solitude, and creative endurance. Capturing sounds from the peacefulness of that childhood home outside the country, they discovered a new voice as an artist and a storyteller. Now, they’re keeping those crossover instincts sharp while anchoring their work in the themes of youth and mental health, all from under their self-run label Angel High.
“bittersweet girl” doesn’t shrink from contradiction, it resides in it. And in the process, boywithahalo has given us a song that feels timelessly relatable, the type of song that sticks long after its final chord fades.
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