Sulene wants to do one simple thing: dance. Well, it’s actually a little more complex than that, as she attests with her latest single “We Go Hard.” Through a claustrophobic wall-to-wall sound, the indie-electronic artist embraces “every aspect of being a woman” and screams without hesitation, “I do what I want, and what I want is to dance.”
“We Go Hard” rumbles and lurches from its staticky casing, as if a beast is being reborn into the world, its former body discarded and swapped out for a better, more resilient one. In many ways, the musical composition mimics Sulene’s awakening into herself. While the song “lends itself to a more universal ‘anthem,’ which is on purpose,” she says, “if you listen to the fine details, it’s about giving myself permission to be a whole human — to be rowdy, to ugly cry, to look ‘not feminine,’ and still feel beautiful. [It] grapples with the complexities of being a woman and what is expected from you in society versus who you really are past all that noise.”
She more than gives herself permission; she soaks the patriarchy in gasoline, strikes a match, and watches it all come burning to the ground. “You boys love the cool girl/She’s fun but not too crazy and so vapid in this world,” Sulene sings, lambasting misogynistic notions about what and how a woman should be. “Let’s go out tonight/And commit a crime.”
The video for “We Go Hard” (Secret Friends Music Group/Trash Casual) premieres today on Audiofemme; with the visual, directed by Spencer Kohn, Sulene takes a literal approach in interpreting the lyrics. Joined by musician Miiranda and comedian Molly Gaebe, the Brooklyn-based performer crashes her own tea party. “The video is basically the idea of doing things that are perceived as very ‘not hard’ juxtaposed with the song saying over and over ‘We go hard!'” explains Sulene about the clip, co-starring furry companions named Kurt Brussel and Violet Von Griffon.
“I wanted to portray a badass girl gang who are just going off while having a beautiful tea party and a pink, flowery sleepover,” Sulene adds. “The video’s message is that going hard is in your being, in your spirit, and not based in how you look or what you do even. Going hard is a mindset.”
It’s glam rock madness, the camera and strobe light working overtime like a sleepover funneled through an acidic hallucination. “We’ll party tonight out of spite,” Sulene huffs into her microphone. It’s a cathartic cleanse, this necessary deconstruction of expectation—even her own. Sulene leaves the ash to melt back into the earth.
Originally from South Africa, Sulene has forged quite the rockstar career for herself. She’s best known as live guitarist in fun. but has also played with Betty Who and Candy Hearts and written music for TV shows like Ray Donovan and The Affair, among countless other creative endeavors. It all began with a red Ibanez Gio electric guitar she was given when she was 14, leading her to eventually study at Berklee College of Music and form a band called Helicopria. A degree in film scoring in hand, she set about taking over the world — well, her little corner of it, at least.
Her first record, titled Strange EP, arrived in 2017; three years later she released another EP called Fire Escaping, then followed it up with her he•don•ic EP in 2021. Intermittently, Sulene rolled out several one-off singles and continued massive touring efforts, all the while further honing her songwriting skillset. Earlier this year, alongside the latest EP, she reimagined Spice Girls’ “Say You’ll Be There” and Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name,” two unpredictable touch points for her own musical style.
With “We Go Hard,” Sulene continues breaking her own rules and shaking up the status quo. Only legends are made that way.
