Heartbeats/Heartbreaks

"Heartbeats/Heartbreaks" is the debut album from Caro<3, a French-born but London-based producer and signee of future-pop label PC Music. The album is a collection of reveries, inspired by different episodes of the producer’s life, but sonically and emotionally taking roots in her upbringing somewhere by the sea in the South of France. “That’s the thing about the sea,” she explains. “When you look at it, it seems that you’re free to escape anywhere you’d want. It helps to free your imagination.”

Growing up in a coastal town just east of Marseille, the sea defined Caro’s childhood. “The landscape is a big inspiration for the album in terms of mood,” she notes. Across the expansive 14-track project, songs ebb and flow in intensity, ranging from washes of ambient synth to busier beat-and-bass tracks that buoy Caro’s ethereal vocal melodies.

With a musical upbringing that ranged from classical piano and vocal training to a keen interest in music production, Caro’s project is remarkably self-sufficient. “I’ve always written songs on my own, on the piano and then the computer when I was a teenager,” she recalls. “Some tracks on the album are a few years old or have been rearranged into new songs. I recently had a clearer idea of how to put everything together and now it makes sense to me as a whole.” Despite some more experimental tendencies, the project is a pop one in essence, influenced by many different genres: some beats more inspired by R&B and hip hop, others more singer/songwriter and even some inspired by emotive film scores.