Nite Jewel, aka L.A. singer-songwriter Ramona Gonzalez, released her last album One Second of Love in 2012. She’s been busy in the intervening years, collaborating with artists like Dâm-Funk and refining the sound of her solo material, and now she’s back with her new album Liquid Cool. Written, performed, and produced by entirely by Gonzalez, the album hones in on a style of synth pop and R&B balladry that favours smart songwriting and sharp sonics above any gimmicks and big name collaborations.

Though the music on Liquid Cool often evokes the greats of the 1980s pop music industry, its lyrics deal with uniquely modern concerns. New single “Kiss the Screen” is about human connections in the smartphone age, and its surreal video plays with this theme in an unconventional way. Featuring a bakery, stilts, and some effortlessly cool outfits and choreography, the video is a far cry from those patronising ‘look up’-styled viral videos that do the rounds on social media every few months.

Watch the video to “Kiss the Screen” below, and read on for a quick catch-up with Gonzalez.

Tell us about “Kiss the Screen”.

Nite Jewel: It’s a song I wrote from the perspective of a person more inclined to live in a realm of fantasy delivered by technology than experience the real thing.

What sort of conversations did you have when you were coming up with the video?

Nite Jewel: How to visually represent the idea mentioned above in a new and unusual way. Delaney Bishop and I have worked together many times and we tend to see eye-to-eye on strange imagery. I knew I wanted this to be my first explicitly romantic video, so it was about how to achieve that in a way that wasn’t totally cliché.

The choreography is very fun.

Nite Jewel: The choreography was done by Busy Gangnes of (electronic pop duo) Telepathe – also my bandmate. She had this routine she was working on that I was interested in. To me, it was like an exquisite corpse of different stylistic voices. It felt like the perfect kind of choreography to go along with the stilted beat of the song, with all the emphasis on the snare hits, almost like the dance of a cheerleader. So we shortened and modified it for the video.

“I spent a lot of time after One Second of Love recording and figuring out what ‘Nite Jewel’ is, sonically speaking” — Nite Jewel

How do you feel you've grown since One Second of Love was released?

Nite Jewel: Immensely. Probably the most I’ve grown, period. I think it was a process of becoming comfortable with my own voice as an artist, but also identifying it in the first place. I spent a lot of time after One Second of Love recording and figuring out what ‘Nite Jewel’ is, sonically speaking. I wrote and recorded three albums – the fourth was Liquid Cool. I felt it was the most pure expression of the Nite Jewel sound.

What new hobbies have you picked up since then?

Nite Jewel: Gardening! That was huge. I fed my household from it for a couple years.

What song are you most excited for people to hear from your new album?

Nite Jewel: All of them, but probably the third single, ‘I Mean It’, simply because that took the longest to record and went through so many drafts. I think it’s perfect now... almost.

Gloriette Records release Liquid Cool on June 10