Dear ghost, you wanna be near me
In the dark, call your name
We’re at peace, in the rain
A hand reaches out in the half-light, and the whole world seems to soften around it. On “Juniper,” Philadelphia multi-instrumentalist Angel Ocaña, recording as Forest Circles, turns a fleeting romance into something spectral, devotional, and beautifully uncertain: a subway ride to someone’s apartment, a pair of eyes held a second too long, a dance inside a cloud before reality starts to blur at the edges.
The spellbinding new single continues to showcase Ocaña’s talent for dream-pop and shoegaze, capturing a sound that feels both intimate and wide open. Forest Circles has long moved through a tender fog of dream-laced atmosphere, swelling guitars, and soft-focus longing, with previous releases such as “Libras” and “Holy Again” tracing a path between bedroom vulnerability and starry-eyed grandeur. “Juniper” deepens that world with a sigh of synth pads, soft drums, and tender vocals that curl close to the ear, purring with bittersweet romance. The guitars glimmer like something pulled from The Cure’s Lost Wishes EP: delicate, glassy, full of ache, and always just out of reach.
Lyrically, “Juniper” feels suspended between touch and apparition. Ocaña sings of taking a hand “like you mean it,” watching the world spin, and asking the oldest, most dangerous question: is this love? The song’s central figure becomes flesh, bone, plant, perfume, and ghost all at once — someone near enough to kiss, distant enough to haunt, and fragile enough to vanish when the spell breaks. Lines about rain, darkness, and “the notches of my spine” give the song a physical tenderness, as if memory itself were learning where to place its fingers.
The video for “Juniper” mirrors that suspended state in a wash of violet and black. Bodies appear as silhouettes, faces slip in and out of grain, and hands drift through the frame like messages from a dream half-remembered at dawn. Abstract streaks of purple light bend into waves, vertical bars glow like subway signals or distant windows, and microscopic textures bloom across the screen like pollen, rain, or cells seen under a haunted lens. Elsewhere, pale flowers emerge against the dark, liquid ripples across a surface, circular patterns suggest surveillance or hypnosis, and ritual objects appear from above: candles, a bowl, scattered leaves, and hands moving with quiet intent. It is a love song filmed like a séance, where romance, memory, and disappearance keep touching the same bruise.
Watch the video for “Juniper” below:
Listen to “Juniper” below, and order the single here.
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The post “Dear Ghost, You Wanna Be Near Me” — Philadelphia Dream-Pop Project Forest Circles Shares Video for “Juniper” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
