A fever dream of grief and grace, Laura Hickli’s “call it off” finds the Toronto-based art pop artist channeling her trauma into something beautifully human through an achingly intimate eruption of pain, memory, and resilience.

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Stream: “call it off” – Laura Hickli

I wish things stayed the same… Sign me up for saying ‘no’ to everything…

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A fever dream of grief, grace, and rebirth, Laura Hickli’s “call it off” is utterly intoxicating.

An unsettling, cinematic indie pop upheaval, the song stirs the soul and tickles the ears with layers of alluring sound spliced into one seductive sonic spectacle. The dreamy and the dramatic coalesce in a performance that provokes us to listen in, to come closer, to dive headfirst into Laura Hickli’s world and pick apart her words, to understand her inside and out as she unravels across four minutes of survival, surrender, and strange serenity.

Send me over a blank
birthday card today
With the envelope
still sealed in the bag
I wish things stayed the same

Sign me up for saying
‘no’ to everything
No more photographing
any memory
I wish things stayed the same
I wish things never changed

If I could slow down the winter
Stay home, be like a mother
who hopes I’ll never grow older
I’m calling off, call it off
Calling off, call it off

Released in mid-July as the lead single off Hickli’s newly released dark secrets EP, “call it off” is an ironically upbeat track with a soaring, catchy chorus – on that explores the numbness and disconnection that comes in the depths of PTSD. Written in the aftermath of a devastating 2023 car accident that left her with a traumatic brain injury and lingering flashbacks, the song marks both a personal reckoning and a creative rebirth for the Calgary-born, Toronto-based art pop artist. Known for her emotionally charged performances and cinematic songwriting, Hickli has long used music as a vehicle for healing and self-expression. Her previous release, 2022’s Both Feet In the World, At Least I Can Stand EP, explored themes of religious trauma and self-liberation; dark secrets continues that journey inward, chronicling her recovery from physical and psychological collapse with raw honesty and unflinching vulnerability.

The emotional shockwave of that experience sits at the core of dark secrets, surfacing most powerfully on “call it off.” Produced with haunting minimalism and lush art-pop textures, “call it off” finds Hickli pairing raw lyricism with an experimental edge, blurring the line between confessional songwriting and cinematic sound design. Rather than revisiting the traumatic moment itself, the song lives in its aftermath – in that surreal, suspended space where the world keeps moving but the self can’t quite follow. Through her words and voice, Hickli gives shape to that disorientation, turning numbness into presence and private pain into something hauntingly human. “Heated seating and my head is made of lead. Trouble reading and accepting I’m not dead. I wish things stayed the same,” she sings. Her lyrics are striking in their simplicity and honesty – the sound of someone trying to keep moving forward while their mind stays frozen in place.

Hickli recalls how “call it off” came into being almost by accident – or perhaps through one. “I wrote this song in my garage studio, I know this only because it’s on my computer… I don’t remember writing this song at all,” she admits. That absence of memory is chilling, and it underscores just how deep she was inside the fog of trauma when the song appeared. “I was struggling from severe PTSD flashbacks, unshakeable depression, and a traumatic head injury after our accident. I was deeply troubled and resistant to life, time… everything.”

There’s something devastating in her candor – that wish for stillness, for time to stop because forward motion only meant more pain. “For a year this feeling lingered. I just wanted life to stop, because at the time, life meant pain and suffering and confusion and grief… I couldn’t handle it all.” Those lines peel back the layers of “call it off” entirely: Beneath its shimmering, upbeat veneer is the sound of a person caught between life and oblivion, trying to reconcile what it means to go on living when everything inside her has collapsed.

She continues, “I saw my friends continue to live their lives, make plans, and even enjoy themselves. I had absolutely no energy, couldn’t set any goals, harbor any hope. I was over it. I just wished, so deeply, that we had never crashed. That all the turmoil I felt never happened, and things could go back to the way they were, that I could go back to who I was, before the accident.” In that longing, Hickli captures something unbearably human: The impossible desire to undo suffering, to return to a before that no longer exists.

“But I couldn’t,” she admits. “So I remained hopelessly stuck in the middle, resistant to change, grasping at no chance of return. Each moment was a battle moving forward, and took one second at a time. And this is when ‘call it off’ was created. Why is it a bop? I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

That last line hits like a quiet exhale – the strange irony of creating something bright and buoyant in the middle of despair. The result is a song that sounds alive precisely because it was born from the brink, where survival and surrender blur into one.

This song is pure cathartic release. Hickli’s performance is both fragile and defiant, her voice carrying the weight of something unspeakable yet unmistakably human. The production mirrors that conflict: Lush but restless, bright but trembling beneath the surface. It’s the sound of survival disguised as pop – beauty born from chaos.

Heated seating and my
head is made of lead
Trouble reading and accepting
I’m not dead
I wish things stayed the same

I’m avoiding all the triggers everywhere
‘Cause life is better
when I’m not so f*ing scared
I wish things stayed the same
I wish things never changed

“call it off” is a stunning, soul-stirring highlight off Hickli’s new EP dark secrets, out now via Ba Da Bing Records.

The first in a three-part release cycle chronicling her trauma, fear, and recovery following her devastating vehicle accident, dark secrets is equal parts confession, contemplation, and acceptance. Across its songs, Hickli confronts grief, nihilism, and self-reclamation with raw vulnerability and visceral grace. As she writes in the title track, “I try to see the meaning in life, dark secrets I hold.”

In her own words, this is a record born from darkness but shaped by resilience – proof that even when everything is stripped away, music remains a way back to the light. dark secrets doesn’t just document recovery; it embodies it – a haunting, heart-wrenching, and ultimately redemptive act of creation. Through every trembling note, Hickli reminds us that healing isn’t about erasing the pain, but learning to live with it: To make beauty from what remains.

If I could dry up the river
Stay home under my covers
Don’t start thinking of a future
I’m calling off, call it off
Cut it off, call it off
Calling it off, call it off
Cut it off, call it off

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