NYC songwriter Clara Joy is no stranger to weaving stark honesty into song, and her latest single ‘Breakdown’ is kind of a meditation on disillusionment in the modern age.

It’s the first taste of her debut LP ‘What We Have Now,’ out May 23 via Shimmy-Disc, an album that distills years of home-recorded introspection into ten haunting, beautifully fragile tracks.

‘Breakdown’ is at once intimate and sprawling, a spectral blend of folk-inflected dream pop and experimental textures, evoking both Elliott Smith’s hushed melancholia and the surreal musings of Sibylle Baier. Clara’s vocals feel weightless yet heavy with meaning, whispering existential anxieties over shimmering guitar lines. A spoken-word passage drifts through the track like a lost signal, amplifying the sense of a world unraveling in slow motion.

Co-produced with Kramer, who completed the album’s final mix in his North Carolina studio, ‘What We Have Now’ is a document of time slipping through our fingers…of youth fading, the city changing, and the weight of history pressing down on personal narratives. “This is a song about feeling a sense of doom about the world and its collapse and how one tries to cope with it,” Clara explains. The accompanying video mirrors this sentiment, translating the song’s emotional core into a visual dreamscape of fleeting moments and quiet desperation.

Clara Joy’s lineage is steeped in avant-garde tradition—her grandparents, Alison Knowles and Dick Higgins, were key figures in the Fluxus movement—but her artistry stands entirely on its own. With ‘What We Have Now,’ she crafts an unflinching portrait of life’s impermanence, proving that even in the midst of breakdowns, there is beauty to be found in the ruins.

Headline photo: Clara Joy

Clara Joy Official Instagram / Bandcamp
Shimmy-Disc Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / X / Bandcamp