Connan Mockasin reveals a new music video for “I’m The Man, That Will Find You” from his new record Caramel out now via Mexican Summer. The video is a fitting visual pastiche to the song’s sultry, soul-infected pop, and features Connan playfully seducing a woman at an opulent English manor. Check out the video above. Connan will be hitting the road next year for his first North American Tour. He recently made his US debut at the Mexican Summer Five Year Anniversary Festival in Brooklyn. Full list of dates below.

Caramel was named after the onomatopoeic quality of the word — the music and lyrics just followed. Mockasin explains, “To me, the word ‘caramel’ sounded so nice and as far as I know, nobody had ever used the word for an album title.” Connan’s sound has evolved from the labyrinthine, oddball-psych of Forever Dolphin Love into Caramel’s equally inventive and unique brand of mutated, lustrous soul.

Born Connan Tant Hosford in Te Awanga on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island, he played the guitar incessantly as a young child after hearing one of his parents’ Jimi Hendrix albums. He later took a hiatus and picked up some new interests – surfing and welding his own versions of carnival rides and beach vehicles. Music eventually came back into his life after high school when he started his first band Grampa Moff (also a track title on Forever Dolphin Love). But it was Connan And The Mockasins (named after Connan’s hobby of making moccasins out of sheepskin and motorbike tire) that first made a mark. In 2006, without friends or contacts, the quartet decided to try their luck in London. They quickly attracted interest from record labels but ultimately backed out of their first deal. Jaded and discouraged, Connan returned to New Zealand. It was Connan’s mother who inspired him to make an album, and he began tinkering with a few four track recorders he had lying around the house. Connan got more than he bargained for when the resulting record, Forever Dolphin Love, received ecstatic reviews.

Fast forward several years, Mockasin was preparing to record Caramel when his father fell suddenly ill. In the aftermath he retreated to Tokyo where he recorded the album over a month-long stay in a hotel room, an influence that can be heard on such tracks as “It’s Your Body (Part Five).” Caramel has hints of Scritti Politti’s exquisitely stitched soul, or of Prince, if the legend had spent time in Canterbury, the epicenter of South East England’s progressive psychedelia during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Mockasin is going places, but at his own pace. Just as Caramel evokes the process of melting and taking on a new shape, a new taste. That is the true sound of Connan Mockasin.

Connan Mockasin Tour Dates:
1/09/14 @ Mercury Lounge – New York, NY
1/10/14 @ Rough Trade – Brooklyn, NY
1/11/14 @ Voyeur – Philadelphia, PA
1/13/14 @ The Drake – Toronto, ONT
1/15/14 @ Bottom Of The Hill – San Francisco, CA
1/16/14 @ Echo – Los Angeles, CA

Tracklisting:

01. Nothing Lasts Forever
02. Caramel
03. I’m The Man, That Will Find You
04. Do I Make You Feel Shy?
05. Why Are You Crying?
06. It’s Your Body 1
07. It’s Your Body 2
08. It’s Your Body 3
09. It’s Your Body 4
10. It’s Your Body 5
11. I Wanna Roll With You

https://www.facebook.com/connanmockasin