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Video

Icarus

Featuring the music of Emily Kuhn
Duration: 8:43
May 27, 2026

Chicago-based trumpeter-composer Emily Kuhn unveils "Icarus" off her upcoming album 'Feathered Things' (July 24, Desafío Candente). Kuhn wrote "Icarus" at a mid-winter artist residency at OxBow School of Art, in Western Michigan. OxBow’s cold, forested, sparkling winter landscape inspired the shimmery aesthetic of the song, which features Meghan Stagl’s delicate vocals, textural guitar pads, and the dark tone of the flugelhorn. While Kuhn didn’t initially set out to write a song about the myth of Icarus, as she found herself experimenting with lyrics, the story emerged as a framework to hold the tension between freedom, stability, and love. "I liked the idea of telling a more intimate side of the story: Icarus acting not out of hubris, but out of a deep longing to be free; his father loving him, teaching him to fly, frantic seeing his son’s feathers melt away," she explains. "While the song is an imagined conversation between parent and child, I also envision the “I” and “you” as two sides of the same person. I think that all of us have some of that duality within us - a deep longing for connection and stability, challenged by that curious, whimsical, often self-destructive voice inside that asks what would happen if we just flew towards the sun and kept flying, and never looked back?" "Icarus" presented Kuhn with a long-desired opportunity to collaborate with a circus artist. Performance artist Hayley Larson perfectly embodies the narrator's whimsy, curiosity, and recklessness in her choreography and performance, while the shadow puppets show a different side of the same character, flying and falling along with the aerials. "I wanted to capture both the playfulness and destructiveness of Icarus' journey, and there's a lot of play with reflections, color, light, and shadows that echo the lyrics and orchestration, getting more and more frenzied as the song builds. Sean Pierce's video work is beautiful - I love the way all the layers come together to create an ever- shifting mood."