‘Secrets and Dreams’ went through more rewrites than any other track on the album. I’d write in Russian, translate to English, lose the meaning, start again. Three complete versions before we found something that worked. So performing it live meant carrying all those ghosts of previous attempts.
The studio version has layers — Vlad built this atmospheric world around the vocals that lets you hide inside the production. Strip that away for a live session and suddenly there’s nowhere to go. Just the song and whatever emotion you can summon in that moment.
We filmed it shortly after ‘Morning’, same setup, same raw approach. But where ‘Morning’ felt gentle and warm, this one demanded something heavier. The lyrics deal with things we keep hidden, the gap between what we show people and what actually runs through our heads at night.
Watching the playback was uncomfortable in the best way. You can see me searching for certain phrases, living inside the words rather than just singing them. That’s what live sessions should capture, I think. Not perfection, but presence.
Two down from the album. Maybe we’ll film the rest eventually.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuUZAB2jJgk
These stripped-back versions keep teaching me things about my own songs.
— Indie pop artist, musician Anastasiia Ledovskaia