BEST NEW INDIE: SMERZ - NO HARM

Swedish producer-duo Smerz vow to take care with someone’s heart on “No Harm.”

Doctors take a vow to do no harm to a patient— primum non nocere, it’s called in Latin. It pertains to the Hippocratic Oath, that a doctor must seek a patient’s best interests and must always strive to help rather than hurt a patient. If doctors hold themselves to this selfless principle, why is it so hard in love and romance?

SMERZ - NO HARM

“No Harm” speaks to being young and in love along with being careless when we should be careful, which was first explored on Smerz’s earlier single “Because.” Singer Henriette Motzfeldt’s vocals sound wispy and ethereal over a bruised, thuggish, sullen beat— distressed and weathered like a creosote-soaked railroad tie, cracking in the sun. “I wanna feel you,” Motzfeldt intones over and over, sounding despondent, seemingly resigned to the impossibility of an actual connection.

“No Harm” is a little bleak, but it’s also blissed-out and transcendent. Perhaps this is this season’s “losing yourself on the dancefloor” moment, slow-grinding in dry ice fog, forgetting your cares— or anything at all, for that matter. This is pure pop escapism, heartfelt and heartbroken at the same time. We here at We Are: The Guard would like to nominate Smerz’s low-key r&b as Top Of The Pops for the confused and emotionally damaged for the coming dark months.