Koven - Heartbeat

Koven make the kind of drum and bass that soundtracks the emotional climax of a film that doesn’t exist yet. “Heartbeat” is peak them: Katie Boyle’s vocal sitting high and clean over a bassline doing quiet devastation underneath. The drop doesn’t explode so much as bloom, and there’s a half-time section around 2:30 where the whole thing opens up like a window and you get a lungful of air. I usually roll my eyes at DnB this polished, but Koven earn it by writing actual songs rather than vehicles for a bass patch. The vocal melody in the second chorus climbs a single note higher than the first and it wrecks me every time — small move, huge payoff. It’s festival-sized without being stupid about it, which is a needle almost nobody threads. Melodic drum and bass gets called cheesy a lot, usually by people who couldn’t write a hook this clean if you gave them a year. Put it on when you need to feel something on the drive home.

Buy / stream this track →