Kitba’s new album Hold the Edges (due September 19, 2025 via Ruination Record Co.) is a dazzling racket of emotion, identity, and sonic stretch marks. Brooklyn-based harpist/artist Rebecca El-Saleh bends the rules here—tugging on the edges of heartbreak, gender, and the frailties we try to protect. The result is art-pop that feels messy, beautiful, and piercingly real.
From the title track “Hold the Edges” to final closer “Cards,” the album is haunted by the tension between containment and release. El-Saleh’s vocals shift throughout the record: airy, twee, then distorted or form-shifted to capture anger, regret, vulnerability. When the voice breaks—or is pushed through effects—it isn’t a gimmick; it’s a revelation.
Musically, the record’s textures are lush. Harps are reshaped into glistening and sometimes menacing voices. Synths prick, guitars slide in for moments of raw edge, drums anchor but also lurch. Songs like “Wolf’s Mouth” illustrate this best—there’s fear, but courage. El-Saleh invites us to be consumed by the unknown just enough to wrest meaning from it. And then “Soften” reveals itself as a cathartic counterpoint: rage lingering after hurt, trying to let go, asking when one stops being so hard on the parts that are meant to heal.
Hold the Edges doesn’t just hold your attention—it holds your guts. It’s Kitba’s deepest work so far, a record where every sound, space, and crack in the voice matters. If you’re into art-pop that blends the surreal and the human, this is one of the albums you’ll turn to when you want that sharp balm.