Run For Cover’s newest signing LANNDS have released a video for “In The Garden.” The Jacksonville, FL duo is comprised of Rania Woodard, a queer Black woman from Memphis, TN who grew up playing guitar in a Pentecostal church, and Brian Squillace, a North Carolina-born producer. Together they make trippy and dreamy electro-pop that pushes back against the environment it’s conceived in, creating progressive art and eschewing all outside influence in the deep south. The result is intoxicating and wondrous.

The pulsing and urgent “In The Garden” is a perfect introduction to the band that captures raw emotion and embodies their DIY ethos—all writing, recording, artwork, and video content is done by the duo. 

“‘In The Garden’ is a take on how I spent a year inside to recenter my awareness and how that made me realize there won’t ever be a right time to do what you want and to just go for it.” says Woodard. “The song is a metaphor for the death and rebirth of our constant daily lives and how we’re just getting by through the ebbs and flows of life.”

Combining Woodard’s pop sensibility and emotional approach to songwriting with Squillace’s trippy sonic palette, the duo created their third EP, lotus. For LANNDS, the EP represented a turning point. After the release of their first EP, they found initial success with an inclusion on Spotify’s “Fresh Finds” and they caught the attention of tastemaker blogs like Neon Gold and Line of Best Fit. Following their second EP in 2018, they toured supporting TENDER and played an official SXSW showcase. Afterwards, they spent a year working on a third release. They later scrapped the project after taking LSD together, concluding that they’d been weighed down by self-doubt.

“In The Garden” greets you with the sounds of chittering birds, as if you’ve stepped into an idyllic paradise. There’s a hypnotizing energy from the careful rise and fall of Rania’s vocals, her song dreamily maneuvering the luxuriant instrumentals. She offers instructions, a reminder to reach and claim a current season that’s waiting for conquest.
Reaffirming Rania’s commitment to pushing boundaries and normalizing people of color in indie music, the material exists on its own plane, merging vocals that make you want to cry with a beat that makes you want to dance.

Photo Courtesy: Tenny Rudolph