Aemia sign to the label Artist House with the single Nowhere To Hide

Aemia, the Persian-Canadian alt-rock duo of vocalist Mia Ravangar and guitarist Kourosh Zarandooz, have signed to Artist House and put out Nowhere To Hide as their first release for the label. JT Daly produced the track, Joseph McQueen mixed it, and Ravangar directed the video herself.

The pair wrote the song together, and its lyrics work through psychological abuse from an unusual angle: Ravangar sings it in the voice of the abuser rather than the person being harmed. "It's a cautionary song," she said in a press statement, adding that she wanted listeners to hear from the outside what being sweet-talked into staying looks like, and how hard it is to break out.

That idea carries into the video, which Ravangar said had to show the permanent mark such experiences leave, down to hands rendered lifeless and marked by chains. MikaDart handled the visual effects, with videography from Mershool and Lava Sood.

The duo's history sits underneath all of it. Aemia formed in Iran, where public singing by women is restricted, and after police raided them and confiscated their instruments Ravangar and Zarandooz left for Canada to rebuild. An earlier single, Zendebad, was written as a tribute to Iranian resilience, and it sits alongside the independent releases Stars, From and Kleptomaniac that preceded the label deal.

Artist House is betting hard on them. Joe Ruzicka, the label's A&R co-lead, called Aemia "the band that defines the next wave of rock", which is a large claim to hang on a first single, and one the pair now have a catalogue to answer.

The signing lands Aemia on a roster with distribution behind them for the first time, and the indie rock reception to Nowhere To Hide will decide how quickly the rest of a record follows.