Indonesian singer-songwriter NIKI has released her second single of the year, ‘Oceans & Engines’.
The emotive ballad arrived on streaming platforms on July 8 via 88rising. NIKI revealed in an Instagram post that she wrote the track when she was 17, whilst going through “the earth-shattering heartbreak of a first love moving for good”.
“It is massively dramatic & long with a naïveté & innocence I look back on fondly now at 23. Like she had no idea about what was going to happen. Like the fact that after writing it in bed at ungodly hours of an 11th grate weeknight snacking on stale cereal she would eventually revisit the song and release it years later.”
Listen to ‘Ocean & Engines’ below.
‘Ocean & Engines’ also marks the latest preview of her forthcoming album, ‘Nicole’. In early June, she dropped the first taste of the record with ‘Before’. The album is scheduled to release in August, and the singer-songwriter has described it on Instagram as the “most favourite thing” she has ever made as an artist.
“It’s where younger me and current me meet and hang out and have a fucking blast together. No words adequately convey how stupid proud I am of it & every part surrounding it.”
NIKI will kick off her maiden solo tour in North America on September 8 in Vancouver, and will cap it off with a closing show in California on October 22. Tickets for all the shows on the tour were sold out in “minutes” – on June 11, a Nashville show was added and more tickets were released at venues where it was possible to do so.
The 23-year-old made history in April as she became the first Indonesian woman to perform at Coachella as part of 88rising’s Head In The Clouds Forever. Most notably, NIKI performed a cover of Andra and The Backbone’s ‘Sempurna’, an iconic Indonesian track. She dedicated it to her family and her home country, Indonesia.