Clyde Crooks steps into the fire of newfound love on “Coldest Day of the Year”

For the singer-songwriter and visual artist, music has always been serious business. Growing up in an artistic household, Crooks’ dad was a jazz musician, and both parents pushed him into music from an early age. Initially hesitant, he gradually became tethered to the vocation he now loves. With a Californian ease, Crooks tells me, “I just wanted to be around artists who grew up in similar environments, we kind of had a shared language”.

Crooks soon found a way to translate this “shared language” into musical production, working with a range of local rappers, producers, and bands who helped him discover and refine his sound. Whilst his creative identity was cultivated amongst LA’s music scene, he’s relaxed about his place within it. Proud of his musical heritage? Yes, but not restricted by it. He makes no bones about being a student of music. A self-produced artist, he executes creative control over songwriting, production, and visuals. Only now is he beginning to cede control of the creative process.

Following his 2025 debut let the red curtain down, Crooks’ next body of work, Hark, is due for release on 18 September via The Nest Records. With this anti-romance project twisting pop conventions, he pushed himself to work with a wider team of collaborators, bringing in a range of creative voices to avoid becoming “a victim of my own ego, a victim of a need to control.” Candidly, “People have great ideas, and there are people out there who are better than me at all these things,” says Crooks.

He’s hesitant to place himself within a musical lineage, but when pushed, lists the likes of David Bowie and Trent Reznor. It’s clear that he sees himself as a musical intellectual, and feels that it’s a gap in the market his music can fill. He doesn’t speak from a place of hauteur, but out of appreciation for the craft he loves, or as he puts it: “I’m on some highbrow shit, that's the truth. I’m an intellectual, and I think that’s a little zone that different people have filled throughout time; I actually think Radiohead was that for a while.”

Crooks’ newest single, “Coldest Day of the Year”, is about the vulnerability of letting love in, changing ourselves for that love, and healing somewhere along the way. “A reluctant love song, sure, it’s about love,” he explains. “But it’s also about sobriety and grappling with addiction. That’s really what this song is about. It’s those things in conversation with love, and romance, and that part of life”.

The synth-heavy goth pop track is accompanied by an intimate music video, featuring a solo Clyde Crooks intently striding through a flickering dark room. It’s reflective of the artist we find on the track; past demons still weigh heavy on him, but he’s intent on outrunning them. With a new love lighting the way, Crooks looks brave enough to bear himself to his lover, and to us.