Nicole Simone breaks the mold, and she’s very proud of it. A multidisciplinary artist, she moves between music, film, and writing with a natural ease that feels almost inevitable. Born in Toronto and shaped under the warm light of Southern California, her proposal, what she defines as cinematic surf pop, finds a balance between the introspective and the atmospheric, memory and imagery, what is felt and what lingers afterward.
Her new single, “Suit Undone,” works as a gateway into that world. A track that captures the fragility of fleeting romances and the way certain places become imprinted with those who are no longer there. The song previews “Circles,” her first LP on vinyl, a project shaped by personal geographies, including her experiences in Los Angeles and Europe, as well as human connections that feel as real as they are incomplete.
We had the chance to sit down with Simone to talk about memory as a creative force, about the connections that exist even when they don’t last, and how her bi-coastal identity shapes both her sound and her writing. We also discussed her process in the studio, her pursuit of organic textures over overproduction, her resistance to being confined to a single discipline, and her constant drive to create beyond the limiting formulas that threaten originality in the age of algorithms.
“Suit Undone” describes a summer romance that wasn’t what it seemed. How did this song come about, and what personal memories influenced its story?
I really wrote this album on a whim. I had this wonderful, spontaneous fling with a foreigner, and it was cool because I got to show him all my ‘secret’ places in Hollywood—the ones that feel like they belong to you personally until someone else is standing in them with you. I’m sure it felt like stepping into a scene from La La Land to him, but after he went back to his home country, every time I went to those places, I could almost see him there. You just get caught up in the memory of a person being somewhere they no longer are. A while later, I saw him in my other hometown, and it was strange experiencing that person in a completely different city, where I had even more history. It felt abstract, like two different films accidentally sharing the same actor.
The track has a very cinematic atmosphere, something that is also part of your artistic identity. How did you build the sound and emotional narrative of “Suit Undone” in the studio?
I was really deep into new wave this summer. I mean, I always am, but I wanted to lean into it deliberately this time. I really wanted to focus on guitar and analog sounds, something that felt tactile and alive rather than produced into a corner. We recorded it at Death Star Studios, which has a great setup for that kind of exploration. Live drums, room to play with sounds, and follow things somewhere unexpected rather than just execute a plan. The cinematic quality comes naturally when you’re not overproducing. You leave space, and the mood just fills it.
In April, you’ll release your first full-length LP on vinyl, “Circles.” What kind of emotional journey will listeners find on this album, and how does “Suit Undone” connect with the rest of the project?
I based the whole album around my Venus line, which runs through London, Paris, and Barcelona, and the people I’ve connected to in each of those places over the years. It’s indie sleaze pop meets new wave, guitar-forward, a little melancholy but never without momentum. The LP feels very LA to me despite all of that European geography. It moves through different moods, but there’s always an underlying warmth to it, and almost every track has this cinematic outro that lets it breathe before it closes. “Suit Undone” sits right in that world. It’s specific enough to feel personal but open enough that I think a lot of people will find their own version of it in there.
Many of your songs explore memory, nostalgia, and fleeting romances. What draws you to those ephemeral moments, and why do you think they resonate so strongly with listeners?
I write what I experience, and the last several years of my life have just been a series of vaguely meaningful, fleeting experiences. Connections that were real but incomplete. Places that became loaded with someone who’s no longer there. It’s hard to build off of anything that unstable, but here we are, and apparently, it makes for decent material. I think those moments resonate because everyone has them, but most people don’t sit with them long enough to understand what they actually mean. I tend to sit with things maybe a little too long, which is probably a personality flaw that doubles as a songwriting asset.
You were born in Toronto but grew up under the sun of Southern California. How has this dual identity influenced your music and your approach to storytelling?
There are some incredible Canadian songwriters I grew up listening to, like Matthew Good, Sarah McLachlan, and Sloan, and I think something about the way they approach a lyric got into me early. There’s a specificity and an emotional directness to Canadian songwriting that I really identify with. But sonically, I’m so shaped by California, the warmth, the atmosphere, the looseness of it. So it ends up being this mash-up where I feel like I get to write Canadian songs in nice weather. Lyrically introspective, sonically sun-drenched. It’s a good combination, I think.
In addition to being a musician, you’re also a filmmaker, writer, and multidisciplinary artist. How do all these disciplines interact in your creative process when composing or developing a musical project?
I’m always weaving my life together. One day it’s music, the next I’m at the track practicing karting, and the next I’m helping load homeless dogs onto a van for the rescue organization I founded. I punish myself internally sometimes for not niching down, for not being easier to categorize. But I’ve come to think that having a subset of genuine, consuming passions rather than a single polished brand is actually more honest. In a climate of so much uniformity and curation, being original and a little weird feels like a quiet act of rebellion. I just like what I like. I like it a lot. That’s really the whole system.
Tell us about the dog rescue organization Redemption Paws. How do your social commitment, artistic vision, and creative life connect through this work?
Honestly, I don’t connect them all that deliberately. Redemption Paws is about having a sense of duty to animals. It comes from a different place than the music does. My art is about having a sense of duty to my own inner life, my own need to process and express. Charity work is complex and nuanced, and so is being an artist, but they don’t really feed each other so much as they coexist. What they share is that I’m fully committed to both. I’m a complainer, not a quitter, so when I’m in something, I’m all in, and then I figure out how to balance it so I don’t burn out. That’s the whole approach, across everything.
You’ve described your style as “cinematic surf pop.” What exactly does this concept mean to you, and how is it reflected in this new single?
It’s kind of the most honest shorthand I have for what the music actually sounds like. Cinematic because there’s always a visual quality to how I write, like I’m scoring something even when there’s no picture. Every song has a scene attached to it in my head, and I think that comes through in the production, the way things build and resolve. The surf element is more textural than literal. It’s not beach music exactly; it’s more the feeling of something sun-bleached and a little wistful, guitar tones that have that particular kind of warmth and space to them. With “Suit Undone,” specifically, you get both of those things. There’s this underlying melancholy that feels very wide-screen, but the guitar work keeps it grounded in something physical and warm. It’s a song about a specific memory, but it sounds like a lot of people’s summers, which I think is what cinematic surf pop is supposed to do.
With “Circles” about to be released, what comes next for Nicole Simone? Can we expect new videos, live performances, or perhaps film projects connected to your music?
There’s a vinyl pressing of Circles coming, which still feels surreal and wonderful, along with music videos and very likely more music sooner than people might expect. I look at the music industry differently these days, not just as someone who’s been in it a long time, but also from being embedded in Hollywood, where you start to see the forest from the trees pretty clearly. The landscape has shifted in ways that I think actually favor artists who are genuinely just trying to make things rather than chase a moment. That’s always where my focus lands anyway. I just like making things. Everything else is logistics. I have a vinyl coming out of Circles, which will be cool, some music videos, and likely more music. I look at the music industry very differently these days, not just as a veteran of it, but also being in Hollywood a lot—you see the forest from the trees. I just like making things, so that’s where my focus always lands.
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The post SUIT UNDONE: NICOLE SIMONE ON MEMORY, MELANCHOLY AND NOT GIVING A F*CK appeared first on LADYGUNN.
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