Melaina Kol Releases New Single 'Idola' With Official Music Video
The emerging artist delivers an introspective track accompanied by a self-directed visual.
Melaina Kol has released a new single titled Idola, accompanied by an official music video.
Melaina Kol, the alias of Nashville musician Logan Hornyak, has shared 'Idola,' a new preview from the upcoming album OKAY THAT'S A GREAT IDEA BECAUSE IF I DO THAT THEN, out via Julia's War Recordings on August 14, 2026. 'Idola' proves that house music is seeped in vulnerability, as fragmented vocals layer between glittering cello and percussion. An official music video for the track premieres today.
''Idola' is one of the more lyrical ones that I believe to be about growing old with someone and fearing constantly disappointing them as a response to what you think love should actually feel like,' Logan explains.
Photo Credit: Rory Bolinger
In May, Melaina Kol announced the upcoming record with 'Lifeheart.' Engulfed in celestial, overlaying guitars and harp with spliced vocals, 'Lifeheart' was praised by Stereogum, The Line of Best Fit, and Hard of Hearing, with the latter capturing the track's 'rich melodic core gilded with musing, refractive experimentalism, labyrinthine finger-picked guitars enmesh with choppy vocal samples in a soaring brush with tenderness and emotional catharsis.' The second single, 'Parallel,' dropped last month, decorated with thoughtful plucks of cello, bashfully stern vocals, and percussion. An official music video accompanies the track, mirroring its fractured nature with collaged visuals of natural life.
A cult favorite across the East Coast DIY scene throughout the last decade, Melaina Kol has shared a plethora of recordings and has explored all corners of guitar music. On the new album, Logan turned to piano, cello, and harp to formulate genre-spanning songs and textures that emulate loss, isolation, and healing love in the most crushing of times.
Melaina Kol has shared stages with artists like Squirrel Flower, Her New Knife, Teethe, and more. Recently, Hornyak previewed new material at SXSW 2026, of which the Austin Chronicle remarked, 'Armed only with a drum machine and a looper pedal, Nashville guitarist Melaina Kol made the most of the intimate atmosphere: no better place to watch a solo artist pull melodies out of thin air.' More shows will be announced soon. For more information and to stay up to date, follow Melaina Kol on Instagram at @melaina_kol.
ABOUT MELAINA KOL
Melaina Kol, the alias of Nashville-based musician Logan Hornyak, is an ever-changing project. It's unrecognisable now from what it was in 2018, for example, when he put out the lo-fi twee-pop record Bird Kill Worm, and it's progressed too from the folktronica songs on 2021's AMOSAT. Hornyak doesn't like to get stuck on one thing; every album should be different from the last. 'I like to get on motifs or ideas, like a theme, and I like to change the way that I record every single time,' he says.
For his new record, Okay that's a great idea because if I do that then, Hornyak decided to lean away from guitar and electronics almost altogether. Instead, he taught himself cello and harp and returned to his childhood piano training. He wanted to fuse his long-time enjoyment of classical music with his interest in ambient and house music, the idea being to create an album that took the approach of electronic music using organic sounds. Classical instruments are chopped, looped and layered around a rhythmic pulse. The effect can be disorienting and uncentering, but disarmingly beautiful at the same time.
Hornyak let the curiosity and naivete that came from learning new instruments lead his songwriting. He uses bowed and pizzicato (plucked) cello on opening track 'Bleater' to create a haunting, unsettling backdrop, while on 'Idola' the cello along with piano and acoustic guitar creates something pensive and delicate. On 'Okay that's a great idea' and 'Lifeheart,' harp is at the front, bringing in lightness and air. Some of the album's richest textures come on 'Parallel', a track which is clearly indebted to house music with its insistent pulse and busy vocal samples; closing track 'ili,' an ambient piece made from flute samples; and 'Vai', which was Hornyak's attempt at a movie score in the vein of Yann Tiersen, on which plucked cello loops recede and swell to create a poignant arc.
Many songs on Okay that's a great idea because if I do that then lean away too from traditional vocals. 'I was obsessed with not singing; I kept imagining vocal lines that didn't really fit my voice,' Hornyak says. Olivia O of Lowertown provided a sweet, wistful vocal feature on the title track, which Hornyak sampled to create vocal textures across much of the rest of the album. Elsewhere, he would compose vocals by singing gibberish mouth sounds and letting the words that fit sonically fall into place. Meaning came to the fore unconsciously. He was influenced by Cormac McCarthy's The Road and the animated movie When The Wind Blows, two works about carrying a torch for hope through horrific circumstances. Looking at it now, Hornyak can see the feelings of despair and of feeling out of place that populate a lot of his music, but also a new sense of hope. 'As you mature and time goes on, your perspective changes on that, and I feel like my perspective changed to be a lot more hopeful,' he says.
Hornyak recorded the album between home in Tennessee and a nearby studio. It was his first time getting to use a real studio for Melaina Kol songs, and he wanted the sound to be high-fidelity and stripped of effects. 'I basically was like, I don't even want reverb on anything, I just want it to sound like you're in the room listening to it,' he says. He paid deeper attention to his performances than he ever had before, focusing on the 'micro-details' of each instrumental part before weaving them together.
For all his restless creative energy, Okay that's a great idea because if I do that then represents Hornyak in a more settled stage of life. 'It's a lot calmer than the last two albums. I did all those albums in my early 20s, when I was going through manic episodes and getting into drugs and stuff,' he says. 'But I would say this album is kinda like the other end of that — the coming out of that, I would say. In my life, I feel a lot more at peace, and I feel like the album translates that.'
ABOUT JULIA'S WAR RECORDINGS
Julia's War Recordings is a community-based record label out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded by Douglas Dulgarian of They Are Gutting A Body of Water in 2021, the label aims to provide physical media for bands that rock, for people pushing the boundaries of music and creation in the modern day.
Photo Credit: Rory Bolinger [Download Hi-Res]
