i give my friends flowers Drops Dreamy Track “Feel Like”
Today, i give my friends flowers — the experimental bedroom pop project by lo-fi hip-hop artist/producer Jacob Klein — is beginning a new chapter with “FEEL LIKE”, his first piece of new music since DOGSTAR 1, his debut album released earlier this year. An organic blend of indie drums, guitars and zaney synths, the new single is atmospheric, bubbling towards a future that’s unknown, but strangely full of hope.
“FEEL LIKE” was the first song i give my friends flowers wrote after the “1,000 year flood” of Hurricane Helene destroyed his town and ecosystems around Asheville, North Carolina. He found a rescued piano and began writing the single, with his headspace somewhere in the space between recovery and whatever comes next. It opens with a warped guitar sample from a friend who had spent much of that last summer before the flood in the studio, working on his own record.
“The hook (“what’s it feeling that like / what’s that feeling that like”) is grammatically unstable on purpose: a somatic reach toward a question that won’t quite form,” adds Klein about the new track. “What does it feel like to live your own life in the middle of chaos — and what are those who’ve moved out of your life feeling now, in theirs? The song doesn’t answer. It holds the question open, closing on ‘after all we’ve been through…'”
Originally a scrapped demo for DOGSTAR 1, “FEEL LIKE” has evolved into a kaleidoscope of a song, with long-time collaborators returning to the studio for the final version. Mike Johnson and Harrison Wargo, co-producers for i give my friends flower’s debut album, found themselves back in the booth alongside Klein. Harper James mixed the track in Brooklyn, and Chris Gehringer at Sterling Sound mastered it.
The new single comes with a visually stunning music video directed by Klein and Yehuda Katz. Inspired by surrealist film and the natural magic of the Earth, it tells the story of a groundskeeper maintaining the land who volunteers to help Klein find and reattach his lost shadow. Katz explains:
“We incorporated all four elements into the video, pulling from our shared devotion and appreciation of the natural world. It’s rich with symbolism, dualism, meaning, and real life revealed — the subconscious threads, fuelled by our conscious actions and experiences, finding purchase before us.”
Jacob Klein began making records at age 10, growing up between his father’s hi-fi audio shop and his mother’s garden, learning early to listen closely to sound, space, and feeling. By high school he was on tour opening for Mac Miller, Selena Gomez, and Maroon 5. Shortly after, he studied at Duquesne and Belmont, apprenticed alongside Jules Shear and Larry Crane, and he spent the better part of a decade producing, engineering, and absorbing everything he could in Nashville, Pittsburgh, New York, and Asheville.
Years of developing his craft blossomed into DOGSTAR 1, a 12-song debut LP that’s non-linear, kaleidoscopic, and densely immersive. It’s named after Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Taking after its celestial inspiration, the record moves between dream pop, alt-pop, electronic-soul, and lo-fi folk, spanning the full range of what it means to lose people to death, distance, and change, and what it means to keep choosing love anyway.
“‘DOGSTAR 1’ was the first half of a story about being stuck in a tangent universe where everything keeps changing yet looks, sounds, smells, feels almost exactly the same,” says Klein. He began writing the project around 2024, when Hurricane Helene destroyed homes and ecosystems across Asheville, North Carolina. Drastic changes to his life kept coming: years of caretaking for family members and watching friends pass through this life too soon; the loss of a young dog to cancer; the end of a decade-long relationship in the wreckage of that grief. Jacob found a rescued piano in the aftermath and began writing. “The people seem the same; the streets look the same,” he adds. “But a dog answers to the wrong name, a friend’s wedding vows sound like something you swear you’ve heard before, and the house you grew up in feels one degree off true when you visit. Then the changes start happening to you.”
DOGSTAR 1 was produced between Pittsburgh, Asheville, and the New River Gorge with co-producers Harrison Wargo, foraging, 34k.beam, Julian Klein, Julius Tunstall, Evan Black, and Mike Johnson. Chris Gehringer at Sterling Sound mastered the record.
Photo Credit: Parker Pfister