Harriette Pilbeam’s Hatchie is back with “This Enchanted,” her first single since the release of her excellent 2019 debut album, Keepsake, and the debut effort on her new label Secretly Canadian.
The Aussie indie popper opens the track with echoing keyboards and reverberating drums that would make Phil Collins proud. Lyrically, Hatchie explores the tension of tough times with an enchanting person. She sings, “It shouldn’t have to be so hard/ I shouldn’t have to hold your hand/ You shouldn’t have to break my heart.” But the chorus finds her under that partner’s spell: “It’s washing over me, this enchanted/ Your image is all I see, this enchanted.”
“‘This Enchanted’ encapsulates everything I wanted to do moving forward from my first album,” Hatchie said in a statement. “I started writing it with Jorge and Joe in February 2020 and completed it from afar in lockdown later in the year. We had been talking about making something dancey but shoegaze.”
She continued, “It’s one of the more lighthearted, lyrically vague songs of my new recordings about falling in love; it’s not a perfect relationship, but you’re enthralled by one another and it’s an easy love. It’s one of the most fun songs I’ve written, so it was a no-brainer to pick it as my first solo release in almost two years. It feels so right to be working with a label as exciting as Secretly as I step into new territory with Hatchie. I’ve been counting down the days until its release for a long time.”
The song comes with a music video that shows Hatchie walking a city streets in angel wings, as well as less ethereal imagery, including a soundstage where she plays the song, a wall of video screens, and more. Check out “This Enchanted” below.