The Summer of Winter

Samira Winter’s new album, Adult Romantix, is colored by change. The Brazilian-American musician, who performs under the moniker of Winter, had settled in Los Angeles after graduating from Emerson College in 2013, where she studied broadcast journalism. As someone who loves the beach and also wanted to be part of a DIY scene where she could find a community, Los Angeles felt like the perfect place for her. But after a decade in California, Winter realized she needed a fresh start.

“It felt like something was dead. Something was stagnant,” she tells me over tea at her local coffee shop. “I was in denial for a long time. After 11 years, I didn’t feel like I was growing anymore. I guess it’s parallel to when you’re in a relationship and you get along and you still love that person, but you’re not in love.” Incidentally, a breakup was also part of the push to start a new life, after Winter realized she was feeling lonely in her relationship and felt drawn to escapism to retain her romantic spirit, fantasizing about an all-consuming love.

While Winter was feeling disillusioned with Los Angeles and started planning her move to New York City—where she officially moved in May 2024 after a period of being in a transitory state between Brazil, the two coasts, and touring—Adult Romantix became an emotional goodbye letter to the city she previously called home. But rather than being a breakup album, the record instead is Winter’s form of romanticizing the memories of her magical, formative moments in Los Angeles: going to shows at the Echo, having relaxing days at the beach, driving down the freeway listening to music, and spending summers with friends.

She likens the time of preparing to leave California and writing Adult Romantix to the feeling of picking up a Polaroid or a magnet, looking fondly at the memories behind it. But that transition period where she wasn’t in Los Angeles proved to be helpful, as being on the road gave Winter a new perspective on her life in New York. You can even pinpoint the changeover into settling into NYC in some songs, like the moody, gauzy “Hide-A-Lullaby” and “The Beach,” a slow-burning track written shortly after her tour with Beach Fossils, which have a less sunny, more gritty sound.

Winter had gained attention through What Kind of Blue Are You? for her shoegaze sound, one that feels straight out of the ’90s, akin to Slowdive, Asobi Seksu, and Lilys. Her 2024 EP, …and she’s still listening, gave a preview of what Winter is capable of when she steps out of the shoegaze box, with an experimental, trip-hop slant. While writing the EP pushed her music to new heights, Winter wanted her latest full-length to be focused on band-based “indie rock bangers.” The result is her most expansive work yet, with the best material of her releases so far.

For this record, Winter brought back her frequent collaborator Joo-Joo Ashworth as producer. She notes that, as someone who writes many songs at a time, she and Ashworth pick their favorites and she records a batch of songs at a time, retaining the emotions fresh shortly after penning the tracks. “It allows for each song to be recorded and have a different feeling,” Winter explains. “I would show up to the studio with so many different emotions, even levels of energy.” She recalls that while recording “Like Lovers Do,” her voice was “really raspy” and she was “a little bit burnt out” after freshly returning from tour, but she used this to her advantage. “It brought that raw emotion to that vocal performance, with really scratchy, cigarette-smoking kind of vocals.”

Like on her previous record, where she brought in Hatchie and SASAMI (who is Ashworth’s sister) as featured artists, Winter invited two of her friends to collaborate: Horse Jumper of Love frontman Dimitri Giannopoulos and former tourmate Hannah Junghwa van Loon, aka Tanukichan. Giannopoulos’ contribution to “Misery” came after Winter realized she didn’t have a second verse for the song. She had a lightbulb moment and found that the song needed a “guy’s perspective” narratively, which Giannopoulos would be perfect for, inviting him on as co-songwriter and vocalist. As for “Hide-A-Lullaby,” the song had been finished, but Winter felt it would be better with Junghwa van Loon’s vocals on it. “I toured with her and got to see her perform every night; I love her voice,” Winter says. “We both sing in that similar kind of whispery style, so I think it really added a lot.”

Winter began writing Adult Romantix shortly after the release of, What Kind of Blue Are You? in 2022. During the winter of that year, the musician took Phil Elverum’s School of Song course, with an assignment leading to the birth of what would go on to become her fourth album. Elverum assigned his class to write a haibun, a poetic form that combines prose with haikus. The prompt was to write about a memory from the past. From there emerged “In My Basement Room,” a hazy track about her early days in Los Angeles, where she’d begin her career as a musician and experience brutal heartbreak.

“It’s a song that kind of became the thesis of my album,” she says. “It’s about the basement room that I lived in at Echo Park. It was the era of summers in LA and early Winter band practices, of throwing shows. [The track] led to the concept of the story that I tied together when I was finishing the album, which is the premise of friendship and love of this lost summer in LA.” To the singer-songwriter, Winter is a character who “escapes into her daydreams,” a concept that ties together with her lush, dreamy soundscapes.

Besides tapping into her memories of Los Angeles, Winter also found inspiration from films, varying from Eric Rohmer’s Tale of the Seasons film series to ’90s rom-coms like Stealing Beauty and Reality Bites. Others, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Virgin Suicides, also brought out the more melancholic elements of the record. But one film had a particularly strong impact on the aesthetic of the album: the Larry Clark-directed and Harmony Korine-written New York City cult classic, Kids.