VIDEO PREMIERE: Eileen Torrez Unleashes Bold Electro-pop Anthem with “The Kind”

Singer-songwriter Eileen Torrez’s latest album, Water + Salt, is a coming-of-age statement wrought with elegant detail and spirited cross-genre exploration. The 12-song album brims with poetic self-reflection and incisive Trump-era social commentary, charting a path for the listener beyond days of despair into an encouraging future. It manages the rare feat of being highly introspective and broadly resonant.

Eileen was born and raised in Corrales, New Mexico (a small town outside Albuquerque), in a music-filled Latino household with five brothers and sisters. She studied classical guitar from the age of 11 until high school, and sang in her middle school mariachi band. Classical guitar’s complex fingerpicking patterns and nuanced chord shapes have made indelible impacts on her signature sensibility.

She describes her aesthetic as “Folk n’ b,” a melding of subtly dexterous Americana musicianship and slinky R&B swagger. Sprinkles of country, early aughts pop, and 1990s alt-rock also season her songs. Eileen’s vocals have an angelic tonality with a touch of twang that combine to infuse her work with biting observations and raw-nerved emotionality. Her lyrics employ clever metaphors, poetic turns of phrases, and twists on the biblical imagery that flooded her Catholic childhood.

Today Glide is premiereing the video for the edgy single “The Kind,” which showcases the new record’s bold exploration of fresh artistic avenues. The song finds Eileen incorporating R&B and hip-hop into a dreamy electro-pop sound that feels empowering. The declarative lyrics are both poetic and sharply blunt, making this the kind of lyrical statement that hits hard. Though the song is catchy and danceable, it was written during the height of the Trump presidency and finalized in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. The resulting lyrics convey a sense of anger but also strength.

It’s a sleek and stirring R&B and hip-hop-flavored track propelled by rugged beats and dipped in moody layers of ethereal electro-pop ambience. Built upon rounds of body-based percussion and layered vocal harmonies, the song smolders with the stirring sense of untapped power. Eileen’s declarative lyrics are both poetic and sharply blunt. One choice passage reads: I am fury/I am mother/I am the force of love the fire that comes to wake you up/You better hear my sound!! The Kind is a beautifully angry anthem written at the height of the Trump presidency and finalized in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eileen describes the inspiration behind the song:

“The Kind” is written from the perspective of the earth on the precipice of a huge transformation. It never ceases to amaze me that as much as humans have destroyed the natural world, its response is always to create more, to overflow, to envelop and sometimes to annihilate as a form of healing. We are in danger of that annihilation, but we also have an opportunity to listen. The lyrics represent the voice of “mother nature” reminding us who she is (and who she is not!). Just as women and non-binary people are challenging the world to acknowledge our wholeness, so I think we all have a responsibility to tune into this multi-dimensional being who will outsmart, outmaneuver and outlive us. When we listen to her voice, we find the same spirit within ourselves to create something new.

To support this concept, I chose to use my body as the core of the beat. The kick is the sound of my palm on my chest and the snare is the click of my tongue. North Carolina producer Jae Quisol helped me map out the song’s structure and blend the body beats with electronic drums and bass to uplift the song’s urgent message.

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