The title “Falling Star” was the trigger that sparked my interest in this semi-recent release by Álauda. Not knowing what I was looking for or what to expect, I pushed play and started searching the web to figure out: who is Álauda? Is this one person? A producer with a guest vocalist? A band? The answer is, I still don’t know. Little seems to be written about Álauda as far as I can tell, but in thinking about how I wanted to know more about the artist(s), I began to believe that maybe this was a good thing. Rather than reading about where the song was written, who wrote it, who produced it, etc., I can instead focus all of my attention on the melody, the lyrics, the emotions being sung, and truly understand the song as art without any background knowledge influencing my opinion. With a pulsing tribal rhythm and melancholy voice similar to Warpaint and Yumi Zouma, “Falling Star” has that tropical semi-acoustic sound that I find intriguing and calming. While I’m tempted to continue my search to figure out who or what Álauda is, I think for now I prefer to just enjoy the music.