No Kill

No Kill is the solo project of Brooklyn-based artist, Jamie Cogar. On her forthcoming debut album, Gold Chorus, Cogar has produced a subtly infectious set of contemporary shoegaze tracks, strung together by shimmering reverb and tethered by drone.

Cogar complicates pop song structures with lush textures and hazy, spacious layers of guitar. The result is an expansive, melody-driven sound that brings to mind Raveonettes, Jesus and Mary Chain, and the Dum Dum Girls’ 60s-influenced hooks, like a shoegaze Mazzy Star. Originally from the Maine coast, Cogar moved to Brooklyn in 2008. Her music often returns to the power of the rocky shores and bleak winters she left behind. Cogar’s reverence for that kind of natural violence comes through in her music in the tension between waves of reverb, her ethereal vocals, and the caustic feedback of the guitar. Cogar taught herself to play guitar as a teenager by playing along with 90s grunge on the radio, which she credits as an influence in her songwriting. She still plays by ear, which she says frees her to think about sound in a playful and inventive way. That inventiveness defines and animates Gold Chorus.