Rejection in the modern age serves violent blows. Independent artists know better than anyone. Woven with skin-grafting strings and debilitating melancholy, Illicit Ghost‘s new song “Wide Open,” premiering today on B-Sides & Badlands, engulfs the listener with suffocating emotion and never allows a moment of respite. Piano crinkles as she crows from the outset, “Oh, here it comes / I always get so perfectly fucking crushed / I know I can’t tame it, yeah / It’s always gonna try and take too much.”

A New York singer, songwriter, and violinist, Illicit Ghosts layers her usual alternative coating across swollen orchestral waves, and the hook is the kind that grabs you by the throat. “Give it to me straight / Do it right / Wide open / And I’m laughing every damn time,” she juggles an onslaught of music industry rejection with a potent inward plea to shrug it off. “Say it to my face / Do it right / Wide open / ‘Cause it gets me every damn time,” she punctures the heart. The sting will never not bring her to her knees, but the fall leaves less bruises these days.

On the song, she writes over email, “I wrote ‘Wide Open’ last year when I was feeling lost and stuck. I was experiencing a lot of rejection as an artist. After two weeks of feeling totally defeated, I decided from then on I would try to take any kind of judgment or frustration I faced and turn it into emotional fuel that lifts me up,” she explains. “In the chorus, laughter is a sign of strength and confidence in the face of rejection. As hard as this can be, sometimes you need to step outside of yourself to get the perspective you need to move forward.”

“Wide Open” is only the latest in a hearty string of impressive singles, including “Precious” and “Parties by Myself.”

Listen below:

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