An interview with Winter

Samira Winter talks about her love for Los Angeles, being inspired by Gregg Araki and Sonic Youth, the beauty and power of shoegaze, and justice for Shania Twain.

Few artists have held my attention as fixedly over the past few years as Winter (aka Samira Winter). I don’t think there is a shoegaze act right now that is better at writing melodies than her. I suppose Wisp has grabbed the spotlight of late, seeing as she is essentially a pop artist disguised as a shoegazer. But in all honesty, while I’ve really enjoyed Wisp’s new album, I feel like she gets a little too lost in prioritizing gauzy textures over pop hooks. And so here I am sharing my excitement for Winter’s new album, Adult Romantix, a euphoric shoegaze odyssey that’s just dripping in wistful intimacy.

Originally from Brazil, Samira Winter moved to the U.S. after high school, cutting her teeth on Boston’s indie rock scene while attending college. It was in Beantown that she formed her band Winter (taken from her last name, of course) in 2012, moving to Los Angeles for the next decade, before changing coasts and making the move to New York City in 2024.

Crafting an enchanting sound that blends shoegaze, dream pop, electronica and even power pop, Winter has become one of the more established singer-songwriters in her circle. Her two albums for the pioneering indie label Bar/None - 2020’s Endless Space (Between You & I) and 2022’s What Kind Of Blue Are You? - were underrated gems, while last year’s more experimental EPs - ...and she's still listening and Water Season (with Hooky) - demonstrated her ambition to work outside of the shoegaze/dream pop box are endless.

For her fifth proper album, Adult Romantix, Winter has moved over to indie label Winspear, joining a roster that includes Teethe, Wishy and villagerrr. Tapping into the cherished memories of her time spent in Los Angeles, Winter presents Adult Romantix as “a lost L.A. summer,” where her celestial whispers and whirling, fuzzy guitar effects offer up sun-kissed melodies and nostalgic vibes.

Featuring guest appearances by Tanukichan’s Hannah van Loon and Horse Jumper of Love’s Dimitri Giannopoulos, Adult Romantix feels like an album I’ve always tried to will into existence. If “popgaze” is in fact a thing (Bandcamp seems to think it is), then Winter has offered up a blueprint for how to do it to perfection, and set the bar for everyone else to try and beat.

You recently moved to New York from Los Angeles. How has that change been for you?

Okay, so right now I'm in L.A. working on some videos for the album. But I just moved to New York last year. I’m mainly living there, but I have a lot of collaborators I like to do songwriting sessions with here in L.A. too. There are a lot of reasons for me to spend some time in L.A., so I'm gonna try to do both. 

How hard is it to juggle being in those two places?

We'll see how it all lands, but I'm just kind of used to being in motion. I’ve always been in transit. Growing up in Brazil I was moving around a lot, so basically up until I was ten I spent my childhood in different countries. I was born in New Mexico, then I spent some time in Mexico. Then some time in Brazil, then Miami, and then I just stayed in Brazil for the rest of elementary school until I graduated high school. 

And then you moved back to the U.S., to Boston? 

Yeah. I really love Brazil and I love going back, and I could see myself one day living there when I'm a little bit older. But I think for right now and for the past decades, since I've moved here, it really has been pulling me to be in the U.S. to be part of a music scene, a community. I moved to New York last year, and then I was touring off and on, coming back to it. New York and L.A. truly are different cities, and there are different pros and cons. I'd say, yeah, getting around. L.A. is actually not too bad if you live in neighbourhoods that are close to each other. But it means a lot more driving and being in traffic, it's such a different lifestyle. L.A. is a place that is really good to miss. I think it's a great place to have nostalgia for. And so I think it's always just going to have such a big place in my heart. Even though I never thought I would ever live in New York, it just lined up in my life. And it has been a fun adventure. 

So you're back in Los Angeles. What does that city mean to you as an artist? 

I think for me, even though the band started in Boston, L.A. was just so formative for me. It's where I played DIY basement shows and found a community where people were throwing shows and were trying different types of nights out. Once I got to score a film and I've dabbled in ambient music. There is a side to me that loves making more abstract music. So I really got into making L.A. my playground, even if at the time I wasn't trying to. When I was packing up and leaving, I had just so many memories rush through me and it just really inspired me to write this new album. Honestly, it's all about L.A. and the transitory period of stepping away. 

When I think of L.A. I my brain always goes to Gregg Araki’s Nowhere for some reason. 

My last record was crazy inspired by Gregg Araki. I keep returning to his films as a source of inspiration, but I think specifically with this record, it does really connect to that world. I think he is just able to capture innocence and teenage irreverence so well. I could watch his films with the sound off, but the music to me was always so important. I learned about quite a few bands by seeing his movies and listening to the soundtracks. 

I could definitely hear Winter on a Gregg Araki soundtrack. Does cinema play a part in how you write your music? 

The visuals come later for me. For me the melodies flow through me first. I am a little bit of a synaesthesia type of person, so sometimes it does happen where I have certain visuals or colours. But I'd say when I'm at the studio recording and hearing the song back that's when I'll imagine the music videos. 

The new album is inspired by late 18th century Romanticism, French New Wave and ‘90s rom-coms. What was it about those three periods or genres that played such a big part in your songwriting?

I think I was just curious to explore the themes of fantasy, the boundariess of fantasy and reality. I think French New Wave was so good at portraying the subtleties and the nuances of the platonic and the romantic in settings like a vacation in a sleepy beachtown. In a way, this album has a side to it that's actually so escapist. I'm also really inspired by that comic Drowning Girl, where the girl is just escaping into her fantasies. And reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it's so beautiful. I was really inspired by the ideals of the romantic movement. Not without a grain of salt. I think it's curious to put a question mark into all of this and just be like, “What are the conventions that we have in our head and what are those stories and how much of it is our own make-believe interpretation of the stories that happen in our lives?” It's all a little bit, I don't know, I love the idea of how memories can have this dreamlike quality to them. All of those things, I think, just inspired the concept of this album. And also just thinking about the romantic period, especially nowadays with valuing pleasure and feeling and romance and love. 

What is it about ‘90s rom-coms that acted as an inspiration for you? 

So the story or the concept of this album is like this indie rock romance between this fictitious couple, the Adult Romantix couple. I think of Sonic Youth's Goo videos. That's just such a part of my life and of all the memories, that was so formative for me. And so I think there's this romantic love that got away. Like maybe it was a short thing, but it did change your life forever and maybe you feel nostalgic about it sometimes. 

It sounds like you're referring specifically to Sonic Youth’s “Dirty Boots” video? 

Oh, yeah, that one. 

It’s really cool that you mentioned that video because it kinda changed my life when I first saw it at the age of 14. I credit “Dirty Boots” for getting me into indie and alternative music in the early ’90s. To me the romance in that video was this perfect teenage fantasy.  

This is what I'm talking about! Sometimes it's the simple things in life, like going to a show and finding out about a band. But I really identify with that. And I'm just inspired by it at this moment too, you know? 

Back to ’90s rom-coms. Were there any specific ones that inspired you?

So “the love that got away” film to me is Before Sunrise. It’s very romantic. Like, just that concept of trying to grasp something that's so fleeting at the end of summer. And that sense of connection. But, yes, that film is definitely a huge inspiration. I love Richard Linklater. I love Slacker too. Also, I would say those Gen X films like Reality Bites and Stealing Beauty because they had indie rock songs in them and this level of fantasy. They were so well done. And it isn’t on the American Hollywood side and I don't even know if it's considered rom-com, but I'm really inspired by Éric Rohmer’s films. He was like the last French new wave director. His Tales of the Four Seasons series of films gave me so much inspiration. 

I sense a lot of that in the album cover. It really fits the album and suggests music that is either about being very much in love or being nostalgic for a time you were in love. Was there a particular feeling you were aiming for with that image?

Yeah. It's funny how the album shaped up to be this love album about love memories, this nostalgia for summers because I started writing it when I was very out of love and in denial too, that I was so out of love. And so I think the album cover, for the first time really ever for me, provided me with a lore of characters. Like in actual real life, when I was writing the songs for the first time, I actually collaborated with more people and had this string of these characters in this phase of my life. 

With the characters from the cover, I was wanting to follow a shoegaze tradition of a very sensual kiss. I was imagining it sort of inspired by the My Bloody Valentine EP Glider. I was imagining that sexy kind of shoegaze, like Gregg Araki or something. I was imagining a really closeup kiss. And we found the couple, who are actually a real indie rock couple. They're both in different bands: Avsha Weinberg is from Lowertown, and Mina Walker is from Daisy the Great. And they're so super in love. They also play music together. Just the way that photo came out too. I felt like it was actually aligned with what the album's actually about, which is like that memory. And so I think it worked out perfectly with the white background and very grainy image. Like it asks, “Is this a dream?” 

Which do you find easier: writing while you’re in love or while you’re out of love?

Easy. When I’m in love. Especially in the beginning, when I’m falling in love. Honestly, even just having a crush, I think it can be really inspiring. I think what gets me about the crush thing, and I think that's why there's so much room for them in your fantasy, is that you still don't know them super well. It hasn't developed yet. As for falling in love, which is the process, I think you have to know and live through some things. You have to show up for them, you know? 

The bio says that sonically you were influenced by Sonic Youth’s Rather Ripped, which I find fascinating because it’s such an underrated album of theirs.

I think with Rather Ripped, we just wanted to capture that sort of sandy, distorted sound, but in these very basic songs. There are just so many bangers on that album and I liked the saturation and the colour. So I was just pulling from different things. 

And it also mentioned a couple of California bands like Further and Starflyer 59, who again, are quite underrated. What is it about those bands that appealed to you?

There are a couple of different things where we actually wanted to do this soundtrack to a lost L.A. summer. There is this style I've always tried to figure out, this sleepy, heroin-y kind of music that is sort of shoegaze, like Tomorrows Tulips. I went to a show a couple nights ago and I was like, "This what I'm talking about. A California summer.” It’s sleepier than the East Coast bands, but it's just like this tradition. I think those bands like Further, they're kind of skater/surfer people. And I just love it. 

And then the guys in that band went and formed Beachwood Sparks after Further. That sound you were describing made me think of a different California band called Acetone. Are you familiar with them?

Yeah, it's like Acetone. I think because I was also writing and recording here in L.A., I wanted that feeling that you're a little bit sunburnt, you're smoking a cigarette - this California shoegazer vibe. 

Both Dimitri Giannopoulos (Horse Jumper of Love) and Hannah van Loon (Tanukichan) appear on the album. I actually interviewed both of them last year. What was it about those two that made you ask them to contribute?

Well, I toured with Tanukichan when my last album came out, and I just love her. I was such a fan of hers for literally forever, since she put out her first EP. I've just always loved her music and touring with her, it was so great getting to hear her voice every night. When we finished recording “Hide-A-Lullaby,” it was just me singing and I just felt like it could use something else because this album's really textural. So I was like, “Oh, it'd be so nice to have another voice.” And I was imagining a girl's voice. Hannah immediately came to mind because she does that sort of whispery vocal and it would be so cool to work with her. I just love her music. And then I reached out and she was down to sing. That's how that happened.

And then with Dimitri, I'm a huge Horse Jumper of Love fan. I met him when I went to see him play once, and we just kind of kept in touch. We were always saying, “Oh, we should jam or work on something together.” So when we were working on “Misery,” it needed a second verse, and I thought it’d be cool if there was a different perspective. So I just thought of Dimitri, and, yeah, I’m just so stoked because they're both so amazing and so cool to have on the record. 

So there are the collaborations on this album, as well as the last album with SASAMI and Hatchie, but also the EP you did with Hooky and one of my favourite songs from last year “Perfectly Blue” with RIP Swirl. What is it about working with other solo artists that appeals to you? 

That's true and I didn't even notice! I am a solo artist and I love writing songs by myself, completely being the director of Winter. That's my job. It's my project and I'm responsible for a lot of the decisions. But I also love getting to collaborate with people. I think because I am a solo artist, sometimes it's just fun to make art with your friends. But I didn't realize it was all with other solo artists. I think I just like working with one other person sometimes. It’s kind of easy when it's just you and another person. I don't know. I guess they just happened naturally because I gravitate towards that type of musician. 

How do you feel about the term shoegaze being used for your music? 

So I grew up in Brazil and I had never heard of it. I hadn't heard of dream pop and I didn't know about any of those bands. I wasn't into indie music in high school either. I didn't know about those styles until college in Boston and going to shows there, and then discovering records with my friends in my early 20s. And it was the time where shoegaze was not cool. Duster was not cool. I'm not trying to sound snobby, but it was truly kind of lame. But I think it was also exciting to discover something that other people didn't know about. I think the part of it that bums me out a little bit these days is that these are really great records by, like Cocteau Twins, and the music is just being played on TikTok. Like, the context of it is getting lost. It feels a little bit like a shallow experience that is connecting people to these albums. I want to make sure people are listening to the whole album and also know about the bands, you know? 

It shouldn't be a shallow experience. I think that shoegaze is really beautiful and powerful and can connect you. I can get poetic sometimes just talking about shoegaze and dream pop because I do think it's really beautiful music with a lot of possibilities. The parts of dream pop and shoegaze that resonate with me are maybe not what resonate with other people. I think you can connect with them in different ways, but for me it's the ethereal and androgynous sensuality. I also do love just blasting it and entering a trance-like experience through a wall of sound. I think it can be so cathartic to experience shoegaze and dream pop in a sonic setting. So I just invite people to listen to that music and really feel your senses because I do think it was made from a place of feeling and reacting. 

Finally, as a Canadian I feel obligated to ask about last year’s single “shaniatwainlovestory.” What is the story behind that song?

Okay, so I watched her documentary [Not Just A Girl ] and I just got really mad about what happened to her. With the husband leaving her for her best friend and then he was her producer. You know when you watch a movie and it stays with you, I like to call that feeling “cinemagic.” It's like you can't live it, you kind of feel the movie inside of you. I had that with the Shania doc and I guess I just was like, “I'm going to write from the POV of finding your husband and producer cheating on you.” And it's funny that it's just so literal, but I was just like, you know, my Shania Twain love story.