Basking in the Sweet Heat of h. pruz's "Dark Sun," a Love-Soaked Indie Folk Daydream

Soaked in love and the sweet heat of infatuation, “Dark Sun” – the intimate, vulnerable, and fragile lead single off h. pruz’s debut album, ‘No Glory’ – is an achingly beautiful indie folk daydream basking in the warm, wondrous glow of romance.

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Stream: “Dark Sun” – h. pruz

I’m your dark hiding place; crush me up, take a part…

Hannah Pruzinsky’s debut solo album opens in a tender moment of unadulterated, uncompromising, and unapologetic vulnerability –

– and while these words are usually followed by expressions of angst and inner turmoil, such isn’t the case with “Dark Sun.” Other parts of h. pruz’s breathtakingly intimate and evocative No Glory certainly come alive with the weight of a heavy human heart, but the record’s first track basks in the warm, magical glow of romance; of two souls’ connection. Soaked in love and the sweet heat of raw infatuation, “Dark Sun” is a fragile, poignant, and achingly beautiful indie folk daydream: Through gentle music and candid poetry, Pruzinsky captures and conveys one of life’s most moving, deeply meaningful experiences – forever enshrining in song what is all too often relegated to a fleeting memory.

“Forget everything else is real,” they beckon, an emotionally charged whisper on the wind. “We’re here in the sun.”

In the dark, try to tell you
How I’m made
How it’s changing

In the sun, you are god
For a moment
As you soften

Initially released November 14 as a standalone reintroduction of sorts, “Dark Sun” is the lead single and opening track off h. pruz’s recently-released debut album No Glory, out March 29, 2024 via Mtn Laurel Recording Co. Active since 2021 (they released a debut entitled EP, again, there in 2022), h. pruz is the solo project of New York City-based singer/songwriter Hannah Pruzinsky, who is best known for their work as a founding member of indie rock by-way-of indie folk band, sister.

The trio’s debut album Abundance released in October 2023 and received critical acclaim as a heavy yet soft, tender yet hard-hitting album of bare, exposed souls: “Abundance aches with a warm inner light as sister. candidly explore what it means to be alive and connected to others in this cold, dark world,” Atwood Magazine wrote upon in a feature upon album’s release, going on to call it a “beautiful, soul-stirring indie rock embrace of the human condition in its rawest and most vulnerable forms.”

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Whereas sister. sees Pruzinsky paired up with bandmates Ceci Sturman and James Chrisman, h. pruz is something of a musical and existential playground for their own unfiltered mind, body, and spirit. It’s a diary-like artistry; a space for experimentation and limitless vulnerability, where they can share those parts of themselves and their world that they don’t even share – at least, not to the same degree – with the other two, let alone anyone else. “Dark Sun” is the perfect example of this intimacy at work, as Pruzinsky surrenders their full physical and emotional self to the immediacy, the passion, the unbridled bliss and beauty of fresh romance:

I’m your dark
Hiding place
Crush me up
Take a part

Residue
On your fingers
Take my hand
Leave a mark

“‘Dark Sun’ is a song I wrote trying to capture the delirium that comes with a new love,” they tell Atwood Magazine. “It’s obsessive and deep, it’s getting wrapped up in the idolization of someone you probably barely know. It was nice to give myself permission to lean into that feeling, to get caught up in that infatuation that feels so rare. It’s a type of greediness I want to take full advantage of when I feel it. I like that in this song, it’s clear it’s allowed.”

“I feel like this song also is a really important touchstone and starting point for a larger story I’ve been trying to work through this past year, so it’s exciting to show the shimmery frenzied side of that before I get to tell the rest.”

And forget everything else is real
We’re here in the sun…
Yes, forget everything else is real
We’re here in the sun…

It’s well worth noting that the sunshine and rainbows don’t last – then again, do they ever? No Glory is a cathartic and complex solo effort that peels back the layers of Hannah Pruzinsky’s humanity one song, one stanza, and one verse at a time.

“I promise it wasn’t all smoke; we met in a snowstorm, what you saw was steam,” Pruzinsky sings just two songs later in “Worldfire,” their delicate voice a haunting vessel of pain and longing in a thick, tense, shiver-inducing landscape. “But assurance, it’s a desert of mourning,” they continue. “There’s no glory, there’s no warning…“

“Worldfire” is yet another highlight off the brand new No Glory, showcasing the other side of h. pruz’s multifaceted artistry – an identity that is more than capable of housing the multitudes within their single being. Pruzinsky has previously described “no glory” as a mantra referring to the visceral, human complexity embedded in their songs.

“Writing No Glory was my chance to explore every crevice of guilt, second thought, and pain that comes with the complete changing of oneself that comes with a life altering change,” Pruzinsky shares. “It was a lesson to myself in giving in to the complete dismantling of a structure I had taken so much time to build, the necessary acknowledgement of guilt (and its seat next to pain), and the inevitable hope of forgiveness, one extending back to myself.”

“I tried on that same hope in some of the most etched in examples of hurting,” they continue. “I tried to see that those very same things could be afforded the same change I was seeing in myself. I’m not so sure I would have chosen this way through my life if it weren’t for writing these songs along the way.”

Whereas “Dark Sun” starts the album in a place of carefree reverie, “Useful” closes the record with a different kind of tranquility: It’s the musical manifestation of the calm after a long storm – a stillness that’s weathered turbulence, and lived to tell the tale. “All the air and space between us I hope it can be used… I hope it can be useful,” Pruzinsky reflects, at once heavy-hearted and free-spirited, finding lessons in life’s wreckage that they carry forward as they move onward. Their voice is barely audible as they ever-so-softly, delicately conclude, “There are details we might misread, that the all was everything, but the all was everything.”

With this finale, we’re reminded of the final words in “Dark Sun,” where life is beautiful and love is in the air: “Take my hand, leave a mark, and forget everything else is real; we’re here in the sun.” Yes, life has a nasty way of getting in the way of our joy, and so many good things seem to, for whatever reason, have a finite shelf life – yet knowing these truths shouldn’t get in the way of us seeking happiness in our lives. “Dark Sun” is not naive; it is real, raw, and radiant.

h. pruz is an open book throughout their debut album, and they make sure to start in a space of light, love, and sonic sunshine – so as to never forget that these things exist, and nothing and no one can take them away from us.

Especially when they’ve been captured so beautifully in song.

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