WL//WH Track Of The Day: OCTAVIAN WINTERS “By The Stars”

Track Of The Day OCTAVIAN WINTERS

Born into the ghostly isolation of the Covid period in 2022, San Francisco band Octavian Winters, comprising Ria Aursjoen (Vocals, Keyboards), Stephan Bryan Salit (Guitars), Jay Denton (Bass), and Randy Gzebb (Drums), are now preparing, with producer William Faith, for a sophomore EP release in the summer of 2026, the follow up to the majestic debut 2023 EP, “The Line or Curve.”

The four-piece have crafted a lush, heavily textured and immersive dark guitar-driven sound that teeters seamlessly between shoegaze/dreampop-infused shimmering transcendental atmospherics and penetrating, shadowy moody post-punk progressions.

The song has the feel of a sea voyage. The images for me were always ones of the vastness of the sky and the sea, and the feeling of the magnificent beauty of the world. The call and answer vocals are like two people calling back and forth across a valley. It’s meant to encompass that feeling of transcendence when you take a meta view of life and of the natural world, and just fall into the beautiful patterns of it all.Lyricist and frontwoman Ria Aursjoen says

The latest single, the soul-stirring, mesmerizing ethereal ballad, “By The Stars,” talks about the stages of life through a lens of letting go of fear and taking the next step in one’s own fateful direction.

I remember playing an all-ages show in Northern California, looked up mid-song and saw these two young goth girls at the front of the stage with tears streaming down their faces. That moment told me everything I needed to know about ‘By the Stars’. You know a song matters when it reaches people like that.drummer Randy Gzebb adds

The song subtly builds over the steady plodding pace of thudding drums and sonorous, gloomy plump bass pulses, underlying layers of anxious jagged riffs limberly stretching in harmonious wistful spirals of ringing reverberations, casting the whole into a bewitching surreal dimension, that drifts alongside call and response vocalizations, blending gentle yet powerful female observations about the beauty of nature, to radiate blissful ecstasy under a deep resonating sidereal arch engulfed in a sense surrender, comfort, and joy.

Octavian Winters will perform live in concert on next Friday, 22 May, during the first night of the prestigious Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig, Germany, having previously won over US festival crowds at New York’s A Murder of Crows in 2025.

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