After making Brazil’s biggest queer pop breakthrough with Rio Pride’s official anthem “IGUAL,” Brazilian-Moroccan artist YANN is stepping into a bold new chapter.
his new single, shoot van killwhich marks his debut in both English and the United States, and begins an ambitious independence era that has been quietly taking shape over the past two years. Written by YANN and produced by Bruno Knauer, the track begins with an unexpected 8-bit intro that glitches into shimmering synth-pop 12 seconds later, a creative choice that reflects the emotional whiplash at the song’s heart.
Ahead of the single’s release, I sat down with YANN to discuss his long-awaited return to music and the very personal experience behind it. shoot van killand why he lends a distinctly queer perspective to David Lynch’s dreamlike world.
Projects that could not be rushed
nevertheless shoot van kill “This is the first song fans will hear,” Yang says, but he says it’s just the beginning of a much bigger body of work.
“Honestly, it’s hard to answer this without giving too much away, because the larger project this song belongs to hasn’t been revealed yet,” he told me. “What I can say is that from the beginning I knew exactly what I wanted to create: the shape, the emotional realm, the sonic world. It was clear from day one.”
What he didn’t expect was how long it would take.
“I thought it would probably be done in six to eight months. It ended up taking two full years. To be honest, even if it had taken three years, that probably would have been the right answer.”
For YANN, extending the schedule became part of the process.
“This project is the most vulnerable and raw thing I’ve ever made, so I couldn’t rush it. shoot van kill Just a little taste. What’s behind it is why I worked so quietly for two years. ”
That vulnerability extends to the songs themselves.
“This is a song I was trying not to write,” YANN said. “I promised myself I would never fall in love again after my last relationship, but someone came in and ruined that promise.”
He continued, “Each lyric is something I’ve actually lived. A diary that no one was supposed to read, scored for the dance floor.”
dance to overcome heartbreak
The single proudly displays influences from queer synthpop pioneers while rooting the story in YANN’s own life.
“I’ve loved ’80s pop for as long as I can remember,” he said. “What the synthpop era, especially contemporary queer artists, understood was that dance music and melancholy were not mutually exclusive.”
He cited artists like Bronski Beat and the Pet Shop Boys as guiding principles.
“The best thing about this song is that it makes you dance to whatever you might be sitting with. The Bronski beats of the ’80s were singing about the loneliness of gay life while getting you on the dance floor. The Pet Shop Boys turned intelligence and heartbreak into songs you could play at parties. That was the lineage I wanted to carry on.”
Those influences formed the basis, but YANN said producer Bruno Knauer helped bring this sound into 2026.
“I think the modern part comes from working with producer Bruno Knauer to transpose it to 2026 and the fact that the song is about my own lived experience.”
Why English and why now?
Before starting this project, YANN believed her music career was over.
“Frankly, I had given up on music,” he said. “I thought that chapter was behind me. I built my life around other things, told myself it was over, and shut the door as neatly as I could.”
But the song kept finding him.
“Something funny happens when you actually come here and try to close the door on what you’re supposed to do. That urge kept coming back.”
Ultimately, he accepted that songwriting remained a way of understanding himself.
“If you try not to write, you won’t understand your life.”
Writing in English became an obvious choice.
“The experience that this describes, falling in love, breaking up, falling in love again, all happened here, in this language,” he said. “Writing about it in Portuguese would have felt like translating my life.”
This transition represents an important moment for the artist, whose previous single “IGUAL” became the official anthem of Rio Pride, reaching number 6 on the Spotify Brazil viral chart and generating more than 300 media articles. signboard and Oh Globo.
A strange twist on the world of David Lynch
The song will soon be followed by a music video that YANN describes as a “bizarre fusion of David Lynch universe and ’90s gaming.”
For him, Lynch’s work has always been emotionally familiar.
“What he has done that no one else has done is treat the subconscious mind as a real place with its own geography, its own rules, its own logic that we can recognize even if we can’t explain it,” Yang said. “His films function like dreams.”
Still, he felt something was missing.
“I always felt like there was something missing in his work. We rarely see queer people exist on screen the way they exist in real life.”
Rather than reinventing Lynch’s aesthetic, YANN sees his videos as extending it.
“I don’t think I’m adding anything foreign to his world. I think I’m revealing something that was structurally always there.”
The visuals also borrow heavily from classic video game aesthetics.
“I’ve always loved video games. The saturated colors, the pixelated textures, the sense of a world within a world. Video sits at the intersection of these two aesthetic worlds.”
The project, which will premiere in August, will be directed by Sam Rhys, whose credits include Chanel and Mugler, and will be shot by Vince Rappa, who has worked with Selena Gomez, Apple TV, Adidas, David Beckham and more.
From pride anthems to personal confessions
A lot of YANN’s music to date has been community-centered. This chapter turns inward.
“igual “This is a collective celebratory song written for a specific moment in the lives of queer Brazilians,” he says, adding, “The new album is less about the collective and more about something specific. It’s more about me than about us.”
He does not see these approaches as competing.
“I think a queer life needs both. The parade needs the national anthem, and the walk home from the party needs a confession.”
“This chapter is on the way home from the party.”
bet on yourself
Since YANN has released it, shoot van kill Independently, all creative decisions remained his own.
“Basically everything,” he said when asked if the creative freedom has allowed him to do things differently.
“The structure of the rollout, the length of the song, the fact that the intro is a 12-second chiptune before the actual song starts, the fact that the music video is less commercial and Lynch meets queer 90s gaming.”
He acknowledged that many of those ideas would not have survived traditional label discussions.
“None of these options would have remained in the discussion with the label. All options would have been questioned and some would have been rejected.”
Instead, all successes and all risks belong to him.
“You can’t blame anyone if it doesn’t work out. It’s scary, but it’s also clear. You stop making choices that you can protect in meetings and start making choices that you can protect yourself at 2 a.m..”
More music already on the way
nevertheless shoot van kill It marks the beginning of an era, and YANN says listeners won’t have to wait long to find out what happens next.
“More music, faster and more often than people expect from independent artists,” he teased. “We’ll have another single coming out this summer, and more through the fall.”
This project has been in private development for two years, so there are already many projects in the works.
“I’ve been working on this quietly for two years, which means I have a lot of material ready to go. I’ll be ready to take you to the dance floor within the next month.”
When we asked first-time listeners what they wanted them to experience in their first minute, shoot van killhis answer perfectly summed up the song’s emotional arc.
“I lost it, but I found it.”
The 12-second chiptune intro is more than just a stylistic flourish.
“That structural surprise is intentional. It mimics the feeling of falling in love against your will. You think you’re into one thing and then suddenly you’re into something else. It’s too late to go back.”
“If someone feels that way in the first minute, then this song has done its job,” he said.
click here listen shoot van kill. You can also stream this song now spotify and Apple Music.
Source: Gayety – gayety.com
