Brighton-based independent artist Cello returns with Forever, a dreamy new single released via Barracuda Recordings and the latest preview of her forthcoming debut album Kung Fu Disco. Described by Cello as neon-tinged teenage heartbreak, Forever explores the strange relationship between time, mortality and love, asking what it means to want a moment to last while knowing that everything is inevitably moving forwards.
Cello
The track captures that bittersweet tension through shimmering indie-pop textures and a distinctly retro atmosphere, drawing on the adventurous spirit of 1980s artists including Blondie, The Motels, Wire and the early Eurythmics. Beneath the song’s dreamy surface is an awareness of time constantly slipping away, with Cello contemplating the fleeting nature of life while suggesting that love might offer a sense of transcendence beyond it.
The accompanying video is equally personal. Cello filmed, directed and edited the visual herself, creating a layered, dreamlike sequence that explores different reflections of the self and the emotions surrounding them. That hands-on approach is central to Cello’s artistic identity. Rather than separating the music from its visual world, she has taken control of the creative process surrounding Forever, building a visual language that mirrors the song’s mixture of nostalgia, uncertainty and romantic idealism. The artist describes the song as being caught between wanting a moment to last forever and simultaneously searching for an escape from it — a contradiction that gives Forever its emotional pull.
The new single is Cello’s fourth release, following the disco-infused Like A Tiger, the more defiant We Do What We Want (When We Want When We Want To) and her debut single Vitamins. The growing body of work provides an increasingly clear introduction to an artist whose influences span several generations and genres, with classic pop, post-punk, art-rock and disco all feeding into her developing sound. Two songs from the forthcoming album have also already been selected for the soundtrack of a major American film release, offering an early indication of the wider ambitions surrounding Kung Fu Disco.
Cello is the solo project of a Brighton artist whose musical journey began with classical training. Nicknamed Cello after studying as a young cellist at the Junior Royal College of Music, she brings the discipline and precision of that background into music shaped equally by a lifelong fascination with rock, post-punk, indie and art-pop. Her influences are deliberately wide-ranging. The theatricality of Stevie Nicks and Lady Gaga sits alongside the sounds of her parents’ eclectic record collection, which introduced her to heavy rock, David Bowie and the Eurythmics. Those inspirations are then filtered through the sharper edges of artists such as Wire and Blondie, creating a sound that can feel simultaneously familiar and difficult to pin down.
Interestingly, Cello only began writing her own material relatively recently. Her songwriting developed during periods of downtime between international touring commitments as a professional cellist, eventually leading to a chance meeting that would prove pivotal to her solo career.
She met producer and co-writer JB on the last train home from London. A former EMI Music Studios engineer with production and engineering credits including work connected to Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Primal Scream, Heavy Stereo, The House of Love and Merz, JB became an important collaborator as Cello began shaping her first album. Together they developed Kung Fu Disco, bringing Cello’s love of rock’n’roll and her experience as a touring musician into the studio.
Recorded at The Metway in Brighton — a studio with a long connection to the city’s music scene and known as the home of The Levellers — the album is intended to capture the experimentation, energy and irreverent spirit that have become central to Cello’s emerging identity.
Cello
Due for release in early 2027 via Barracuda Recordings, Kung Fu Disco promises to expand on the world introduced through Cello’s first four singles. For now, Forever provides another glimpse of that world: romantic but restless, nostalgic but forward-looking, and caught between the desire to hold onto a perfect moment and the knowledge that time never stops moving. As Cello’s debut album approaches, the Brighton artist is steadily turning those contradictions into a distinctive musical and visual universe of her own.
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