Mélanie Pain returns with Dreamloop, a spellbinding preview of her upcoming album How and Why, set for release on November 21. Known for her soft yet piercing voice, the French artist has long balanced fragility and elegance, but this new chapter feels more intimate than ever. Here, she turns the repetition of emotion into poetry, offering a bright pop sound that conceals a much darker core: the helplessness of watching someone you love drift into their own inner spiral.
The music video, directed by Simon Vanrie, captures that emotional landscape through minimalist visual storytelling. Inside a sunlit house, five women and a young girl move through quiet, repetitive gestures, brushing past one another, coexisting in silence, each locked inside her own loop. Inspired by Edward Hopper and Gregory Crewdson, Vanrie’s direction bathes the mundane in melancholy.
Musically, Dreamloop feels spontaneous but carefully crafted. Recorded live in the studio with Pain’s long-time bandmates—Raphaël Chassin on drums, Oliver Smith on bass, Jérôme Plasseraud on guitar and mellotron, and Alexis Anérilles on piano—the track opens with a steady tambourine pulse and gentle folk guitar that weave around her voice. The piano’s soft accents and subtle basslines give the song its heartbeat, while Pain’s phrasing, tender and deliberate, anchors everything in quiet intensity.
What makes Dreamloop so captivating is its refusal to rush. The song circles around itself, echoing the loops it describes, but never feels still. Each repetition adds a new shade of emotion, as if the melody were quietly learning from its own steps. Pain’s voice drifts between tenderness and clarity, carrying that strange calm that comes when you finally stop resisting what hurts. Rather than closing a chapter, Dreamloop feels like an open window into her next one: a serene, hypnotic glimpse of How and Why and the delicate balance between melancholy and renewal that defines it.
Following the release, Mélanie Pain will bring Dreamloop to the stage with a series of European shows this winter, including stops in Nottingham, Newcastle, Brighton, London, Cologne, Brussels, and Paris—some alongside Nouvelle Vague.