Australian songwriter and producer KESMAR (aka Nathan Hawes) has released his new single, “Day by Day” today. The new track finds KESMAR leaning into the groove with articulate guitars, conga backbeats and keyboards that call to mind Marvin Gaye or Curtis Mayfield. Listen to it now below.
“This song came from listening to a lot of organic disco and features the Yamaha CP70 on the solo,” says Hawes. He expanded on the song’s meaning, saying, “‘Day by Day’ is one of the favourite songs from this new up and coming collection of music. It’s a song that I wrote towards the end of 2020, really to be straight up it’s just a break up song, I hadn’t been alone for a while and was really struggling with thoughts. Writing music a lot of the time is a big coping mechanism for anxiety and at that time the future, as the world was changing drastically. There have been countless versions of this song, it really pushed me and my creativity. After playing it live for about a year I knew I had to try and capture the sporadic essence of playing it live. The end of the song features an elaborate keyboard solo by Tim Ayre tied with the energetic drums by Patrick Rogers.”
The accompanying music video features archival footage of Hawes’ parents on road trips circa 1979-1982.
“My dad was always big on documenting their time moving from country to country with their friends and family,” he explains. “There was over two and a half hours of footage to sort through, it was tough to condense it down to four minutes or so. To finish off the clip there were hand painted fonts by my girlfriend Jenaya. We wanted to keep the spirit of home videos so it felt right to have the imperfections of paint rather than using digitally generated fonts.”