Julia Holter Announces New Album 'Materia' - "Fantasy" Single w/ Music Video

Julia Holter - one of contemporary music's most distinctive composers and songwriters - announces 'Materia,' a seven-track companion album to her acclaimed 2024 release 'Something in the Room She Moves.' Conceived as a companion and spiritual sequel to 'Something,' the collection features new songs written and recorded with her band between tours, fresh interpretations of "Materia," (originally a song off the 'Something' record) and compositions she developed during the sessions for that 2024 album.

Alongside this announcement, Holter shares "Fantasy," one of 'Materia's' most radiant tracks. "May the daydream flood my mind," she sings, creating new emotional pathways, anticipation and unease at the same time. Like a waking dream, the song creates a world of surreal beauty, Holter's voice leading the way across a luminous arrangement toward an expansive, transcendent climax.

Directed by Dicky Bahto in collaboration with Holter, the song's music video places the artist within a series of fleeting, dreamlike vignettes: arms reaching through the frame, gestures inspired by monastic sign language, and the appearance of a beloved cat. All of them contribute to the video's quietly surreal atmosphere.

Reflecting on "Fantasy," Holter says:

“This song of seeming willful abandon was somehow the most laborious undertaking of the entire record—it took over a year and went through various transformations—and I love that contradiction. It’s dancey, it feels to me like a kind of conjuring. And amidst the momentum of reverie, there’s the line “blink at the light and hope to survive,” because daydreams in a fascist state can be scary too. I was trying to find the right sanguine tempo.”

Watch the video for “Fantasy” here.

'Something in the Room She Moves' received widespread acclaim upon its release in 2024, establishing the sonic and thematic landscape that 'Materia' continues to explore. Critics praised the album’s warmth, its emotional resonance, and its expansive sonic palette. Pitchfork lauded the album - "Holter's filmic vision has never sounded more diffuse" - while Bandcamp Daily called it "an album bursting with musicality—lush, and full of affirmation, soothing and challenging at the same time." Paste hailed its "swirling odyssey of sweeping sound and emotion," and The FADER called it "Holter's warmest, most expansive work yet," later putting it No. 35 on their Best Albums of 2024 list.

The album’s reflections on motherhood, grief, and transformation connected deeply with critics and listeners. AllMusic noted that "Holter excels at translating the joy, fear, and exhaustion of creating and caring for a new life into powerfully expressionist music," while Exclaim! praised it as "some of the most beautiful work of Holter's career thus far." Its lead single, "Spinning," also received year-end recognition from Pitchfork, ranking at No. 42 on its list of the 100 Best Songs of 2024.

Julia Holter Online:

juliaholter.com | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Bandcamp