Rare DM
- bizzarre
- 3 minutes ago
- 4 min read
NYC Dark Synth Pop Artist Rare DM announces new LP ATTENTION & shares new single and video "Compliment"
Under the alias Rare DM, Erin Hoagg crafts dark pop music steeped in allure, the New York City-based synthesist, songwriter, and visual sorcerer announces her full-length Attention, out May 29, 2026. She has also shared the single "Compliment".
The track explores the confusing validation of being flirted with while in a relationship, vocals shifting between abruptness and delicacy over a choppy dance beat. Accompanied by an otherworldy video directed by Lisa Saeboe and edited by Hoagg, this is a mesmerizing introduction to Attention's sexy, enveloping world.
On the single, Rare DM shares:
“'Compliment' started with writing lyrics with my Juno 60, using twisting bouncy arpeggiators and chopping up my original vocals into rhythmic stabs.
It is inspired by when you are in a relationship, and someone who you had eyes for (before meeting your s/o) suddenly pays attention to you. I was sent a suggestive message from someone, and wasn't single anymore.
As the lyrics share: 'don’t you worry about it for a second, I can take a compliment' because hey, I don’t want them to feel embarrassed or bad, they didn’t know that I met someone! This all being said… I can’t control if they are thinking of me. 'You can’t have it… but you can imagine it'"
On the video, director Lisa Saeboe expands:
"I wanted "Compliment" to feel like a surrealist journey through the unconscious, utilizing mirrors, repetition, and portals to create a simulacra of modern day loneliness and desire.
"Compliment'" is also a love letter to artists that have helped shape my own visual language.
We start the video with a reference to the Rokeby Venus by Diego Velásquez, the dreamy beach landscape inspired by experimental filmmaker Maya Deren, followed by Caravaggio’s Narcissus gazing into the pool, and of course the multiple echoes or Rare DM ascending the stairs à la
Eadweard Muybridge.
I’ve always thought of Rare DM as Man Ray’s ideal muse, whose work also helped establish the tone for the video."
Erin Hoagg’s Rare DM is a fully realized audiovisual world: Moody, pulsing, and meticulously constructed. Analog synthesizers throb beneath surreal depictions of the mundane. With a midnight love for the avant-garde, Hoagg dons the glamour of art deco with a fondness for vintage suiting, H.R. Giger, Akira, and fantasy novels. Rare DM seeks solace in the otherworldly, obscured in her enigmatic stage presence. As a trained swing dancer, a glimmer of proclivity for the 1920’s and 30’s shines through — also evident via Hoagg’s signature platinum bob; a “vidal sassoon” take on the flapper era style.
With tours spanning across North America, Europe, and Mexico, Rare DM has showcased her immersive DAW-less performance alongside artists including Molchat Doma, Model/Actriz, Xeno & Oaklander, Mareux, and Drab Majesty. Festival appearances include Substance (Los Angeles), Flesh & Steel (New York), South by Southwest (Austin), Coldwaves (Chicago), Verboden (Vancouver), Grauzone (Den Haag), and Black Factory (Kyiv).
Born in Baltimore to fine artist parents, and later relocating to Manhattan to study fashion design, Hoagg’s foundation in visual art is inseparable from her sound. Approaching Rare DM as an all encompassing art project, Hoagg fuses music, image, styling, movement, and narrative into a cohesive mythology. Neon-streaked, retrofuturistic, dreamlike, often eerie and emotionally charged — her iconography is as deliberate as the compositions. For every video, a new world is conjured up before the first frame is even shot. As a director and editor, she sculpts with a meticulous eye, commanding light, texture, and pacing with the same precision she brings to the studio.
The mastery of synthesis is central to Rare DM’s identity. As a producer and multi-instrumentalist, Hoagg composes with her home studio as her catalyst: Sculpting rumbling basslines, metallic pulses, cascading arpeggiators, and machine-driven beats from a trove of analog gear. Her hardware synths and drum machines are curated and scavenged from the streets of New York, haggled for in the depths of Craigslist and further reaches of the internet. The result is tactile and enveloping: Machines distort and shimmer like living circuitry. Sketches begin in solitude and are refined in motion — on tour, in transit, on bike rides — lending a sense of propulsion and immediacy.
Hoagg makes her true motion picture debut in The Bride!, directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, as the synth player for Fever Ray. The Mary Shelley inspired film, starring Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley, hits theaters March 6th. The appearance marks a natural expansion for Rare DM from underground spaces to the silver screen.
Rare DM’s second full-length, Attention, leans fully into spectacle and seduction. Where Hoagg’s debut, Vanta Black, lingered in heartbreak, Attention is kinetic and self-aware — an exploration of lust, performance, and ego. The title nods to both scrutiny and precision: A meditation on being watched, and on watching closely.
“Compliment” surges with electric tension before detonating into a pummeling peak. “Skater Hits Me Harder” reframes adolescent memory through adult desire. “Honey” and “Landed” drift through luminous atmospheres, their glowing synths and weightless rhythms unfolding with a sense of quiet momentum. “Significant Other” is an instrumental that explores Hoagg’s darker sonic terrain while showcasing her technical command. On “325,” an homage to the titular BMW E30, undulating bass propels a fantasy of escape. “LA Traffic” answers gridlock with techno-laced urgency. Recurring automotive imagery explores the friction between acceleration and stagnation. Throughout, engines rev, lights streak, and tunnels blur. Motion manifests as metaphor.
With Rare DM, Hoagg designs her world through light and sound, layering vivid textures that feel almost tangible in their flow. Attention expands her universe while keeping its core intact: analog, neon-lit, and humming with intention. Beneath the glow runs a darker current, where shadowy tones and hypnotic rhythms lure the listener onto the dancefloor, which Hoagg weaves into her magnetic live sets. Attention arrives worldwide, May 29, 2026.
