Annie Hart announces new album, tour & shares first single, “Stop Staring At You”

Renowned musician and composer Annie Hart is thrilled to announce her fourth full-length studio album, The Weight of A Wave, set to release on August 4th on Uninhabitable Mansions. Her minimal pop songs explore the fringes of new wave, pop, and ambient music; and have been called “sumptuous synth-pop’ by Vogue.

Hart’s illustrious musical career took flight in 2003 when she entered electropop scene as a member of Au Revoir Simone. Their synthesizer-driven tunes were prominently featured in movies, commercials, and hit TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy and David Lynch’s 2017 revival of Twin Peaks (the band also appeared on the show). In 2017, Hart embarked on a solo endeavor with the release of her debut album, Impossible Accomplice, whose tracks appeared in popular TV shows such as Marvel’s The Runaways, Trinkets, The Fosters, and the Naomi Watts-led Gypsy. Venturing further into her artistic evolution, Hart stepped into the film industry in 2020, composing scores for several feature films, including IFC’s Olympic Dreams and Universal’s Banana Split. As a solo artist, she has shared the stage with renowned artists like Fred Armisen, Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip, Delicate Steve, Saint Etienne, Voxtrot, and Marissa Nadler.

The Weight of A Wave showcases Hart’s undeniable songwriting prowess. Characterized by an eclectic mix of poppy basement rock to energetic krautrock-inspired jams, each song was crafted in what Hart and her friends affectionately call “Song Challenges,” producing a minimum of three songs per session. This technique grants the album an organic and vibrant quality that successfully captures a sense of spontaneity often missed in studio recordings. The lead single from the album, “Stop Staring At You,” epitomizes this unique musical expression. Directed by acclaimed cinematographer and director Benjamin Kasulke, the music video features Hart doing Yvonne Rainer-inspired dance on a glorious beach in Malibu.

Annie Hart’s educational journey includes studying at Juilliard and tutelage under notable composers like Timo Andres, Randy Woolf, and Conrad Cummings. Notably, Hart’s compositions have been recognized with several prestigious grants and residencies, highlighting her remarkable talent. In 2017, Hart received the PRAH Foundation Writing Residency in Margate, UK. She was also the recipient of the 2020 Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant for a writing residency at Aunt Karen’s Farm in Mt. Vision, NY. Hart’s compositions won her the NYC Artist Corps Grant in 2021, and in 2022, she had a composing residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Most recently, in 2023, Hart was awarded the Queens Art Fund grant for her composition and public performance of a string quartet piece.

As she looks ahead, Hart continues to push her creative boundaries. She is currently scoring the short Aphasia as part of the prestigious ASCAP/Columbia University Film Scoring Workshop. Annie continues to break boundaries by composing music for patient listeners in her own distinctive self-taught style. 2023 will see the release of several projects, further building on the momentum of her career.

Annie gives the back story of the “Stop Staring At You” single and video:

“This song was inspired by a very charismatic friend of mine who was addicted to looking at how many likes they had on Instagram. I had fallen under their otherwise charming spell and was along for the ride of their friendship and fun adventures. One night, I saw them surrounded by fawning half-fans and saw them basking in the glow of this empty affection, and all lit up by being worshiped, and I just saw the sad emptiness of that kind of existence and knew there was nothing I could do for this person, that they had became the prisoner of their own misery. This song is about not judging your self worth on other people’s half-attention and finding your true value in yourself and your real relationships.

The video for this song is a meta take on this concept.  It zooms out and makes fun of me – I hired a director to make a video that is all about me, singing a song about other people obsessed with themselves.  I wanted to make a statement about how we are all participants in this sort of self-indulgent behavior.  But I also just wanted to dance and make weird art on the beach.”