How Are You? (Single 2026)

Ismena

Dark Melancholic Folk Singer-Songwriter

As nature is earth’s most vulnerable treasure, music feels like a connecting element. This comes down in organic sounds and in visualizations in artworks as well. Like on one herald of an album entitled “Please Don’t Ask Me How I’ve Been”. 

Actually, it is the third single after “Be My Water” and “Something More” on the new Ismena record after “This Time”. Number one featured winged fishes like in a fairytale like “Big Fish”. The second displays a gigantic butterfly-like insect, similar to aliens in movies like “Ender’s Game”. 

Finally “How Are You?” comes with a big snake, animated in the YouTube clip. Ismena stands in the center of a square looking up, with a subway and a staircase building a triangle behind her. With Temple Fang’s guitarist Ivy Van der Veer, she formed Myriad’s Veil, and in this single, band member Daan Wopereis plays the drums. 

But before, Ismena sings a cappella, which could easily last longer already. Not that the dissonant melody would do any harm. The beginning vocal line remains like a loop from Tash Sultana. Then it is time the rim-click comes in, until the break. 

There it changes to a marching rhythm and piano notes. The direct lyrics stand in contrast to the beautiful music building a cognitive dissonance: ‘I don’t want anything to do with you’, there goes the clear break in spoken form. 

With this combination of strong and straight words and soft instruments, Ismena reminds of Hellsongs. Even though the feeling is more close to the dreamlike atmosphere of Loma, that is the connecting part to nature. 

An atmosphere, that brings one close to the origin. Like when Queens Of The Stone Age descended underneath the surface of Paris, to record “Alive In The Catacombs”. Music to feel.