Misha Chylkova | Psych dream pop musician unveils video for Dead Plants, a hypnotic ballad steeped in symbolism and emotional depth

Out on YouTube on Friday, 2 May 2025, Dead Plants is the latest visual release from Czech-born, now Milan-based, Londoner Misha Chylkova, taken from her debut album Dancing the Same Dance (Gare Du Nord Records, LP, CD and digital, November 2024).

Directed by Leonardo Canzi, the video accompanies one of the album’s most cinematic and emotionally resonant tracks with a dreamlike narrative exploring alienation, conflicted choices and ritual. Driven by a moody, entrancing atmosphere, Dead Plants explores the quiet heartbreak of investing knowingly too much of yourself in something that will never reciprocate. The imagery – minimal yet symbolically rich – mirrors the track’s meditative pacing, placing the artist herself at the centre of a domestic space where small gestures of farewell unfold like quiet rituals.

The video reinforces the album’s overarching theme of repetition – as a psychological loop, a behavioural pattern, a musical motif. Track eight on Dancing the Same Dance, Dead Plants encapsulates the vulnerable, introspective side of Chylkova’s songwriting, marking her out as a compelling new voice in the psych dream pop landscape.

“Dead Plants reflects the quiet tragedy of giving too much of yourself to something that will never give back – and worse, choosing to do so knowingly. It speaks to the persistence of hope, even when laced with doubt, and with the weight of words left unsaid. At its core, there’s a thread of quiet self-destruction, an ache from nurturing what is already lost. I thought the metaphor of watering dead plants captures this perfectly: a tender, futile ritual we carry out in love, denial, or sheer stubbornness. And, in the end, our choices are ours alone to make, and to live with,” says Chylkova

Misha Chylkova is a Londoner of Czech origin. Always drawn to darkness and repetition, her artistic perspective offers a highly personal view of reality and romantic relationships. In her music, elegance meets simplicity, as she gradually layers melodic threads into a crescendo of complexity. This melodic minimalism, enriched with a touch of sharp humour, was forged in London, where Misha fell in love with music and began playing within the anti-folk scene alongside artists such as The Awkward Silences, David Cronenberg's Wife, and Extradition Order. In 2020, she started a fruitful collaboration with Darren Hayman (Hefner), Ian Button (Death in Vegas, Thrashing Doves), and Jonathan Clayton (Hurtling, Jim Bob), which led her to release several singles between 2021 and 2022 with the independent label Gare Du Nord Records. The same artistic partnership is the foundation of her debut album, Dancing the Same Dance (Gare Du Nord), set for release in November 2024. After moving to Milan (Italy), Misha Chylkova put together her live band, joined by Gabriele Arnolfo (Huge Molasses Tank Explodes), Niccolò Avanzi, Lorenzo Parisini (Bear of Bombay), and Gae Vinci himself, who also brought her on board as the vocalist for his solo project’s live line-up and the single Devil's Night (Blood on the Tracks Records, 2024).