Levi Taschuk is a 28-year-old singer-songwriter from Salmon Arm, British Columbia – a small town that, by his own account, bleeds into the atmospheric and introspective quality of everything he makes. He came to songwriting in his early twenties, later than most, but has described himself as a lifelong obsessive listener, and the breadth of that listening shows in a reference palette that runs from Bach and Brahms to Nick Drake, Sibylle Baier, Chet Baker, and Radiohead. In 2024, he spent a week in New York recording an EP with co-producers Miles Hewitt and Karl Helander, recruiting Jake Falby of Julie Byrne and Mutual Benefit for violin. He then spent the better part of a year and a half building his debut full-length, Dyna Dyvest, with co-producer Connor Mead, due September 4th. “A Kiss,” released June 5th, is the latest single leading up to that album – described in press materials as an emotional rollercoaster that balances cosmic imagery with raw human moments, a love story, and a tragedy in one.
Aesthetically, it’s like an alien singing about a very human experience. The lyrics are barely decipherable through the idiosyncratic delivery – a spacey, breathy vocal style that prioritizes texture and atmosphere over legibility. Musically, it complements that approach completely. Thematically, the lyrics are introspective and psychedelic in the sense that they feel like a very small part of a much bigger story, one your head fills in as you embark on the journey with them. Lines like “we hung our souls up with clothespins” and “drink in the darkness in our wrists” land as impressions rather than statements – vivid enough to mean something, open enough that everyone who hears them will mean something slightly different by them.
That quality – giving the listener room to project their own story into the gaps – is the defining feature of the Nick Drake and Low Roar comparisons the press materials reach for, and Taschuk earns them. “A Kiss” is not a song that explains itself, which is exactly right for what it’s trying to do. Dyna Dyvest, if this single is representative, is shaping up to be one of the more interesting debut albums to come out of the Canadian independent scene this year.
