Community Picks is a weekly series where artists submit a release to be voted on by members of the Nina community. Once a week, the release with the most votes will receive editorial coverage. This week’s winner is Villa, Redhead with Quiet Light, and their song “I Can’t Help It," which is a groovy, trippy breakbeat pop collaboration, fresh for 2025. We sent over some questions to the artist, read the interview and listen to “I Can’t Help It” below.

Where are you from?

Villa, Redhead: Amadora, Portugal.

How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it?

I just make the music I wanna hear, making the sounds I like. I like dreams, I like abstractions, I like love, I like stuff my mind just comes up with. I guess sonically it is just a reflection of who I am as a person and I try really hard to make it as personal as it can be while not making it so obvious and available at the same time. I feel like the music that deeply resonates with me seeps into whatever I make in some way so if it helps people out in boxing me in, I really like Grouper, Panda Bear, Organ Tapes, Cindy Lee, and Mk.gee, just to name a few. I would suggest people to start with my album Infinite Abundance available here on Nina as a starting point in getting to know me.

Tell us about your release on Nina?

Very grateful for Nina first, as I am pretty sure this song wouldn't exist without it. Quiet Light found my music through Nina and added my track to her Selected By Quiet Light hub. I had found her music a couple months prior and I really loved her album Blue Angel Sparkling Silver so when I found out she liked my music I was really happy. I'm pretty sure I asked her immediately if she wanted to make a song together and she said yes so on that very same day I wrote this song and I think in a matter of a few days she reached back with the vocal takes she recorded, so the song was basically done very fast.

Then we sort of just sat on the demo version of this song for a while because I had fucked up the acoustic guitars but both of us were too busy at the time to do anything about that. Eventually when I had some more time I tried to edit the song a little more and after fucking it up a few more times, I finally managed to record something that we both thought was good and the saxophone recorded by my friend Fernando Sá Machado helped out a lot too. Lastly, very grateful for Quiet Light, it was really cool to work with her and she helped me out so much with her advice when it came down to mix the song.

What kind of tools do you use to make music?

I play a few different guitars on my songs. The one I play on “I Can’t Help It” and in all other songs I have with acoustic guitar is a black Takamine G-Series Dreadnought. For electric guitars I play a J Mascis Jazzmaster or an Epiphone ES-335 copy. I usually play them straight into the interface using an amp sim or into a Roland JC-4O. 

Other instruments I use are my Beatle bass that you can hear on this track and “Linger (That’s It)” and a Korg Minilogue synthesizer. I also have two different tape machines (a Tascam Porta One and a Tascam Portastudio 464) that are a huge part of my sound, although I still just make most of my music on Ableton Live, I like using tape as a processing/mastering thing.

Who are five independent artists you think people should check out?

ben yosei, priincess, milgueg, Cindy Lou, rainger.