Munich producer SAINT WKND, 22, has only just released his debut single, and yet he's already built up a staunch fan base. In a sense, "Golden"—or the EP that spawned it, Golden Youth—aren't really debuts as such. In fact, his SoundCloud—replete with bootlegs, DJ mixes, remixes and collabs with the likes of Chet Faker, Saint Motel and Louis The Child—has already clocked a jaw-dropping 25 million streams and a vast following. Which brings us up to the present day as SAINT WKND prepares to drop the video for his recent collaboration with Australian singer Hoodlem.
The two connected when SAINT WKND found, and promptly remixed, the singer's track "Old Friend" a couple of years ago. They've since reconnected and collaborated on "Golden", a glistening, off-kilter piece of electronic pop centred around Hoodlem's infectious vocal style. And then there's the video. Playing to the title, it features a series of decidedly eerie figures with golden eyes peering into the camera, coupled with equally surreal imagery involving cityscapes, late-night hedonism and wolves.
Somehow finding time in the midst of his astonishing work rate, the young producer explained to us his thoughts behind the track and some musings on life in general: "As a kid of Generation Y, we ask ourselves what the purpose of our existence is. We feel that we are not good enough, that we don't have enough. We search for something and yet we sometimes don't know what it is. And the only way to escape is to flee into moments of ecstasy. We mostly keep our fears and secrets inside us, because our society is build around success. It's our eyes that speak sometimes more than our words do."
