Camp Saint Helene Shares “Racing”

For Camp Saint Helene, the concept of otherworldliness is neither strange nor complex, but alluring and holy. Created by Elizabeth Celeste Ibarra, Dylan Nowik, Wesley Harper and Alex Wernquest, they approach their craft akin to a ritual, leaning into the notion that art and expression are sacred experiences on an overstimulated planet. Often informed by the spirit of a defunct Christian-summer camp turned arts-colony deep within the mountains of New York, their music searches for shimmers of hope amidst hints of doom.

Their new album, Of Earth and its Timely Delights, out May 10th, 2024, measures the distance between grief and possibility. It is a meditation on earth-time in relation to the cosmic, the lyrics a commentary on big-picture themes such as personal and collective revolution, dystopias, greed, love and human connection. With an urgency that is both thoughtful and experimental, the sound of Camp Saint Helene is a collaborative endeavor; a sonic enmeshing of each member’s individual character. Hot off the heels of the band’s first hauntingly dreamy single, “Anniversary” along with an equally appropriate prom-gone-wrong-witch video, Camp Saint Helene release the track & video for “Racing” today. Singer Elizabeth explains: “Racing initially came about when Dylan and Wesley sat down to do some songwriting together. I always somehow end up writing slow, sad songs and we all wanted to play something more exciting for a change. I had a really hard time coming up with lyrics, to the point that we were recording and the song still wasn’t done. So Wesley had some ideas and we wrote the lyrics together. All of us feel heavily inspired by the natural world, so that’s what we centered the song around – feeling humbled by a force greater than ourselves.”