For 13 years, Keith Carne has held down the drumkit for indie-pop favourites We Are Scientists. Now the NYC-based multi-instrumentalist is stepping into the spotlight with his debut solo single “Look For The Moon,” out now, alongside the announcement of his debut solo album ‘Magenta Light.’
The single is a tender, skybound love song built on glistening synth textures and a steady pulse pulled straight from the ’90s Madchester era. Carne wrote it for his wife, artist Hayley Youngs, and it captures the strange, measured altitude of touring life, where love gets counted in miles, time zones, and the quiet glow of a shared moon. The lyrics drift between airplane cabins and existential free-fall, landing somewhere intimate and disarmingly human.
“I travel a lot in my touring work with other bands and I miss her profoundly when I’m gone,” Carne says. “I think about her very often on airport runways, especially flights when I’m the one leaving. This is why there are references to 37,000 feet, oblivion above the clouds, falling and, maybe most importantly, Delta airline wine. Hayley and I always talk about our moon-connection when I’m gone, about how we can connect with one another simply by looking at the moon when we’re apart. Just the act of looking for it brings me great comfort because it brings her to mind.”
The single is a luminous entry point into ‘Magenta Light,’ a record that marks both a departure and an arrival. Carne’s role in We Are Scientists continues, but here he steps toward centre stage as songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Across eight melancholic pop songs threaded together by expansive, transcendent passages, the album blurs ethereal tonality and propulsive dance rhythms over an indie-pop spine.
The title carries a striking origin. “I named the album for a psychedelic vision my wife had, she saw sparkling, magenta light pouring from my face,” Carne explains. “I began recording the ideas in my head the very next day with this vision in mind. It’s inspired in equal parts by Pharoah Sanders’s explosive spiritual jazz and Fred Again’s catchy dance anthems. Its implications are both interpersonal and extraterrestrial.”
That duality, earthly and cosmic, intimate and infinite, runs through the whole record. Carne recorded every note in his Midtown Manhattan studio, bathed in literal magenta light from an LED lamp his wife gave him after her vision. Though primarily a drummer, he plays most of the instruments himself. “Drumming in a band is like conducting an orchestra from the back of the bandstand,” he says. “That’s why a drummer-led ensemble doesn’t feel like too much of a creative leap.”
The album moves from the groove-driven existentialism of “Totally Liminal” to the protective fire of “Keep Away,” the blissed-out clarity of “37 Hours,” and the nature-struck awe of “Mist Trail” and “The Falls.” Throughout, the songs grapple with connection and dislocation, the transient spaces we pass through and the people who tether us when everything else feels in flux.
‘Magenta Light’ was written, recorded, produced, and performed by Keith Carne, with additional contributions from Brian Bond (Gem County), Justin “Bestamo” Gaynor (Gem County / Keith and Bestamo), Zeno Pittarelli, and Drew Citron (Beverly). Bond handled mixing, Pittarelli mastered the album, and the cover artwork was created by Hayley Youngs, with design by Benedict Kupstas (Field Guides). It’s a warm, ambitious solo debut, and “Look For The Moon” sits right at its emotional core.
