London, UK artist Seraphina Simone has released her new single “Skin.” The track is now available to stream and his part of her double single, which also includes “Blue Devil.”

Seraphina Simone on “Skin:”

“It’s about sex and desire. It ties into a book I was reading about a devout woman in Bible Belt America who marries young for duty, and then falls for someone else in her 40s and starts an affair. The whole book was about the contradiction between her emotions and her upbringing, how what her body and heart were telling her was right was seen as sinful. I think as women we’re often taught to tame our desires, to make them fit into something that is palatable and acceptable for the male gaze or an outdated expectation of how a woman should behave, and by doing that we lobotomise a part of ourselves. ‘Skin’ is about that inner conflict.”

On the other, she is musical aristocracy, although the term makes her cringe. Her father is the musician Terence Trent D’Arby aka Sananda Maitreya. Holidays, when she was a girl, meant long trips through California, brushing shoulders with everyone from George Harrison to Billy Idol, or being babysat by Pamela Des Barres. Some artists might claim their ‘godparents’ were Prince, Miles Davis, Christie Hynde, Pete Townsend and Mary Greenwell. Seraphina’s actually were.  A childhood only takes you so far. From all these influences, from her deep-South pastor grandfather, and a heritage that is black, Greek, Irish and Cherokee, Seraphina Simone has created a sound that’s wholly her own. These are smart, sun-drenched tales of heartbreak and longing, queer sultry odes to the bad decisions you wished you hadn’t made and the ones you wished you had.