Burning is a visceral, slow-burning alt-rock reckoning that simmers with personal and planetary grief before erupting into a cathartic blaze. Oakland songwriter Naomi Neva’s latest single distills childhood trauma, environmental dread, and fractured trust into three minutes of raw, guitar-driven poetry. a track that feels both intimately diary-like and devastatingly universal.
From the first haunting guitar line, Burning immerses listeners in Neva’s world of smoke and mirrors. Her voice—equal parts bruised and defiant—delivers lyrics that cut deep. The verses smolder with restrained fury, painting vivid scenes of evacuation routes and broken friendships, as the chorus ignites into a wall of grunge-tinged distortion that mirrors the song’s central metaphor. The bridge’s abrupt drop to near-silence, leaving only Neva’s whispers as a masterstroke of tension before the final, furious release. Self-produced in her home studio with Abbey Road’s mastering polish, the track showcases Neva’s evolution from her folk-punk roots into a sound that channels PJ Harvey’s raw storytelling and Big Thief’s emotional immediacy. The guitar work particularly shines, alternating between spiderweb-delicate fingerpicking and tsunami-force power chords, mirroring the duality of fragility and resilience in her lyrics.
Burning isn’t just a climate anxiety anthem or breakup song—it’s the sound of a generation realizing too late that the adults weren’t in charge. Neva doesn’t offer easy answers, but she makes the air easier to breathe in, howling the questions. Tune in to Burning by Naomi Neva on all music streaming platforms now.
