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Feb 01, 2023 By Mark Redfern

London trio Girl Ray have shared a new song, “Everybody’s Saying That,” via a music video. Ben H Allen (Gnarls Barkley, Animal Collective, MIA, Belle & Sebastian) produced the song, which finds the band embracing ’70s disco, as filtered through modern indie-pop. Alice Harding directed the video, which fittingly takes place at a club, complete with a rollerskating dancer. The single is out now via Moshi Moshi. Watch the video below.

“The lyrics on this single were inspired by the straight-to-the-heart simplicity of the disco greats,” says singer/guitarist Poppy Hankin in a press release. “I wrote it while missing my partner while on tour in 2020, and it plays on themes of new love and self-doubt. Musically we took reference from the nu-disco resurgence that seemed to be taking off in 2020, in particular from the likes of Kylie Minogue (Disco), Jessie Ware (What’s Your Pleasure?), Dua Lipa (Future Nostalgia), and Róisín Murphy (Róisín Machine). We were really inspired by all of these women re-imagining disco.”

Hankin had this to say about the video: “We met Alice, the director, while we were all working in a coffee truck on film sets over the pandemic. Alice is the special kind of person you can put total faith in and know she’ll make something amazing, so when she agreed to direct our video we were beyond excited. We wanted the video to have an emphasis on atmosphere and colour rather than narrative to fit in with the feel of the song, which Alice achieved wonderfully. Lyrically the song is about longing, and even though it was filmed in Slough, the video has pure Hollywood vibes thanks to a hugely talented cast and crew, and countless favours that Alice managed to pull in. We hope you enjoy it.”

Harding adds: “It was such a pleasure to direct this video for Girl Ray. We forayed into the underground to a party harking back to the halcyon days of Studio 54—in a boy-meets-boy story of love, lust, music and pure ’70s disco joy.”

When we last covered Girl Ray, in 2021, they had shared a cover of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 song “Murder on the Dancefloor,” via a music video.

The trio also took part in our 20th Anniversary Covers of Covers album last year, covering HAIM’s “Another Try.”

In 2021, the trio shared the song “Give Me Your Love,” which was produced by Joe Goddard and Al Doyle from Hot Chip and was one of our Songs of the Week. Their most recent album, Girl, came out in 2019 via Moshi Moshi.

In 2020 we posted a mini-documentary on Girl Ray, where we visited their home studio. Watch the James Loveday-directed film here.

Also read our My Firsts interview with the band from 2019.

Girl was the follow-up to their 2017-released debut album, Earl Grey (it was our Album of the Week and #3 on our Top 15 Debut Albums of 2017 list).

Read our Pleased to Meet You interview with Girl Ray and check out our exclusive photo shoot with the band.

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