New Look - The Ballad

“We’ve felt a little jaded for the last few years; it’s a hard business doing art,” Ruba says. “But as far as coming through in my vocals, that’s not intentional. I’m not sitting at the mic with a mad look on my face thinking, I hate life. It’s more a stylistic thing.”

In fact, Ruba goes on to reveal, she got her start singing in front of big-band jazz outfits while still in high school (“It was the only game in town at the time,” she explains), and it’s probably this experience, the polar opposite of withdrawn experimental pop, that gives the album its odd moments of sultriness and sometimes soulful frisson. "Vogue"