B-Side Guys

Vulnerability requires weapons. On “Babybird,” the second track from Oakland’s Pillowprince debut EP pretty, baby!, songwriter Olivia Lee wields slowcore’s deliberate pacing and shoegaze’s wall of fuzz to examine how love’s most tender moments can feel simultaneously like salvation and destruction. Released twenty-seven days ago, the track demonstrates how queer romance often requires building new languages for experiences that existing frameworks can’t adequately describe.

The opening confession—”Where does all of it go/The hole in my heart/The lump in my throat”—establishes immediate physical presence for emotional absence. Lee’s vocal delivery here captures the particular exhaustion that comes from carrying unprocessed grief while attempting to remain open to new connection. This dual state—simultaneously emptied and expectant—creates the emotional foundation for everything that follows.

What distinguishes “Babybird” from standard indie-gaze relationship exploration is how it positions love as both antidote and intensifier for existing pain. “Remembering everyone/Every darkness that comes/You’re how I know/That we’ll be alright” suggests not that love erases difficulty but that it provides framework for surviving what can’t be erased. This perspective reflects the mature understanding that healthy relationships don’t eliminate personal struggle but create space for it to exist without consuming everything.

The track’s most striking moment arrives with “And nothing feels better than/Taking it in/And spitting it in your mouth.” This visceral image transforms the typical indie love song territory into something considerably more primal and intimate. The metaphor suggests not just emotional sharing but literal exchange of substance—love as physical transfer rather than abstract feeling. This intensity aligns perfectly with the EP’s stated exploration of “sweet-and-nasty” love that refuses sanitization.

Instrumentally, the arrangement showcases the production collaboration between Lee and engineer Ian Pellicci, with mixing by Beau Sorenson creating the “immersive sonic landscape” promised in the band’s materials. Fuzzed-out guitars provide textural weight while allowing space for Lee’s “lush harmonies” to create moments of surprising clarity within the density. This production approach mirrors the lyrical content’s movement between overwhelm and precision.

The slowcore elements serve the song’s emotional pacing, creating space for listeners to inhabit the discomfort of waiting—for phone calls, for touch, for resolution that may never arrive. When Lee sings “You’re on the phone/Waiting for my call/To comfort my heart,” the arrangement breathes with the anxiety of anticipated connection, demonstrating how musical restraint can intensify rather than diminish emotional impact.

As part of an EP that explicitly centers queer experience while remaining “welcoming to all,” “Babybird” offers insight into how marginalized communities often develop more sophisticated emotional vocabularies by necessity. The track’s willingness to examine love’s more unsettling aspects—the desire to consume and be consumed—reflects an artistic maturity that refuses to romanticize what requires honest examination.

“Babybird” succeeds because it captures the specific ache of craving intimacy that’s both healing and potentially destructive. Through careful attention to both sonic texture and emotional nuance, Pillowprince has created something that feels genuinely necessary rather than merely cathartic—a song that expands the available language for describing love’s most complicated territories.