B-Side Guys

Some relationships haunt better than others. Saint Avangeline’s “Carolina Creature” treats old memories like photographs left in sunlight—faded, distorted, more atmospheric than factual. The Atlanta singer-songwriter, who’s accumulated 79.63 million Spotify streams through this exact alchemy of darkness and dreaminess, turns the complicated early days of a past relationship into something that exists more as mood than narrative.

The production settles into that space where dream pop and gothic darkness overlap without announcing which side it’s leaning toward. There’s ethereal haze here, but it’s the kind that obscures as much as it reveals—memories blurred not by time alone but by the particular distortion that comes from looking back at something you’re not sure you understood even when you lived it. The track unfolds with the logic of a dream, where emotions register more clearly than specifics, where feelings have more weight than facts.

What makes Saint Avangeline’s approach compelling is how she resists clarity. “Carolina Creature” doesn’t try to resolve its complicated feelings or deliver neat conclusions about what that relationship meant. Instead, it exists in the uncertainty, treating ambivalence as its own valid emotional state rather than something to be worked through and overcome. The gothic elements never feel like costume—they’re the appropriate aesthetic for examining the parts of our past that refuse to stay buried or make sense.

Following “Limerence” (which Rolling Stone picked up on), this new single continues her trajectory of transforming personal excavation into something that registers beyond the autobiographical. At 2.3 million monthly Spotify listeners and 5.35 billion TikTok streams, she’s clearly found an audience for this particular brand of beautiful unease. “Carolina Creature” proves she’s not diluting the darkness to reach them.