Maripool

“Soundtracking days spent in increasingly sunny bedrooms, simultaneously bored but hopeful for the imminent freedom about to be restored.” DIY

“Her music doesn’t quite sound like anyone else…blending shoegaze aspects with 90s indie rock flavours, all pieced together amid a bedroom pop sensibility.” Clash

“Rippling with dark undertones…Maripool offer company in a world of solitude”. Hard of Hearing

“Captures the aerial melancholy that swirls between the delightful wonders of articulated shoegaze… a witching hour state of deep-blue dreaming.” So Young

Signing to Californian indie Smoking Room (Island of Love, Hotline TNT) London-based, Lisbon-born ‘one girl band’ Maripool - real name Natacha Simões -  announces sophomore EP a day that feels like nothing at all and shares new single ‘not today’ - out 3rd April.

Blooming like a wallflower, ‘not today’ retains all of Maripool’s trademark DIY’s intimacies, but veils them in a gorgeous, shimmering dream. Inviting comparisons to the likes of Electrelane, Life Without Buildings, and Galaxie 500, jangly two-chord patterns dance among scraping violins and shimmering synths, clouding up into ever more pearlescent patterns  while never leaving the bedroom walls that define its conception.

Recorded, mixed and produced by Euan Hinshelwood - of Cate Le Bon’s backing band - with Simões herself playing every instrument bar bass and violin, at the track’s core lies a stagnating depression, and itching feeling of being caught in a stasis, as Simões pithily explains:

“It’s a song about when everything around you is bringing you down. When the days roll into one another, nothing ever changing.”

‘Not today’ by Maripool releases is available for streaming from 3rd April 2024

More About Maripool:

Moving to London from her hometown of Lisbon aged 18, Natacha Simões got a job at Whole Foods and bought a guitar with her first paycheck. Having never played music before, she spent her evenings after work teaching herself the classics of 90s Midwest Emo. Eventually dubbing herself Maripool, the project came to blend her emo foundations with the scratchiness of jangle-pop and the washes of 90s shoegaze. Playing the majority of instruments on her records, Maripool is a DIY project through and through: Simões designs all her own artwork and gig posters, directs her own music videos, often performing solo sets in London, and at other times with her band. 

Releasing debut single ‘Blindness’ in 2021, and it’s follow-up It All Comes at Once EP the following year (via Practise Music) to acclaim from Clash, The Line Of Best Fit, DIY, So Young, Beats Per Minute, Hard of Hearing, When The Horn Blows and Mix It All Up, Maripool has also graced Left of the Dial, Supersonic Block Party, Wide Awake festivals, earning support slots along the way for the likes of Porridge Radio, Flat Party, Bleach Lab, Langkamer and Mandrake Handshake.