$YNDRM offers bittersweet beauty on a lush single, Sweet Life”
Sweet Life, the latest single from NYC-based art rock producer and songwriter $YNDRM, arrives like a soft pulse through the neon fog. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t chase virality. Instead, it hums. It floats. It quietly haunts you in the way only a great late-night track can.
$YNDRM, known offstage as Howard Alper, has long built a name in the New York scene as a versatile musical force, weaving threads through indie rock, soul, electronic textures, and poetic songwriting. On Sweet Life, he fully steps into a sonic identity that feels unmistakably his: 90s-tinged pop and soul bathed in slight trip-hop atmospherics, rich with nostalgic undercurrents and spiritual unrest.
The title suggests something easy and carefree, but that’s the point. The sweetness is a question, not an answer. Lyrically, Sweet Life asks where true contentment lies and whether we ever really find it at all. It’s the soundtrack to that existential nighttime sigh staring out over blinking city lights and wondering what part of the dream you're actually living in. It's meditative without being inert, emotional without being overwrought. Alper doesn't deliver these lines as if he has the solution, he sings as someone still seeking it, with equal parts yearning and grace.
The production, co-helmed with Kee Chung (GOCCO, Electric Powered Soul, Rotten Cheri), is a highlight in itself. It's minimalist but immersive, a masterclass in restraint and layering. A rhythm section tiptoes beneath velvety synths. The beat feels lived-in and human, never mechanical and more heartbeat than drum machine. You can hear space between the sounds, allowing the listener room to wander and feel. There's no rush here. The track builds slowly, almost imperceptibly, like rising water. By the time you're fully submerged in its atmosphere, it’s already tugging at something in your chest.
Then come the vocals, sweet, silky, and slightly detached, in that perfect dream-pop way. His voice doesn’t sit on top of the mix rather it folds into it, becoming another instrument in this beautifully calibrated song.
It’s both uplifting and melancholic, grounded and atmospheric. It invites movement—swaying hips, nodding heads—but also introspection. It feels tailor-made for those liminal hours between night and morning, when everything slows down and the truth gets a little clearer.
With a song like this, it becomes almost immediate that you’ve got to check out the rest of his tunes to really get the feel. We urge everyone out there to take a moment to listen in and of course to follow along for more!
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