Artists You Should Know: The Seshen Search for a Way Through Heartache Together on New Single and Music Video for "Hold Me"

Bay Area collective The Seshen has unveiled the arrival of a new chapter with the release of “Hold Me,” a propulsive electro-pop track that heralds the imminent arrival of their fourth studio album Nowhere. A decisively vulnerable glimpse at the sorrow that follows an emotional sundering between two people once intimately entangled. For founding members Lalin St. Juste and Akiyoshi Ehara that meant exploring the dissolution of their marriage via divorce, as well as their attempts to navigate those first scary steps into the unknown with each other’s help.

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Despite the heartbreak that throbs at the center of the new song, “Hold Me” overwhelms that anguish with a suffusion of empathetic lyricism and ebullient melodics. Submerging you in the soothing buoyancy of St. Juste’s vocals as they thread the various ebbing currents of reverberating synths and thrumming beats that course through it.

The track offers a way forward in spite of the painful changes that the ending of any relationship might cause. One that craves reconciliation and acceptance as necessary requisites for moving on. Allowing space for future growth and escaping the mournful entrapments of resentment. “Show me / And I’ll show you,” she sings comfortingly. “Where to go / How to get out.”

St. Juste said of the new single: “‘Hold Me’ is about that moment before loss — the hope, the longing, the desire for love to stay. During the separation between Aki and I, we held onto each other to navigate the darkness …a darkness that was dizzying, disorienting, and unfamiliar. We held on to each other and found our way out. This song is about connection even in the face of change.”

The new single also comes with a music video directed by Paul Bates that reminisces on the band’s journey thus far. Combining scenes pulled from their electric live shows and rehearsals with an ethereal array of animations (the most striking of which features two hands grasping one another before pulling away) that tenderly graze the lovelorn bittersweetness it exudes.