THE FRONT ROW

London’s underground music scene isn’t short of compelling voices right now, but Matt-Felix is rapidly carving out a lane all his own. With new single Cold With Desire, the capital’s rising live-circuit favourite takes a bold sonic turn, delivering a bass-led juggernaut that smashes through genre lines and expectations with the confidence of someone who’s found their stride.

Matt-Felix doesn’t just flirt with genre conventions, he dismantles them and rebuilds from the ground up. With Cold With Desire, the rising London artist delivers a brooding, bass-driven slow-burn that’s equal parts poetry, performance, and psychedelic swirl. It’s a natural evolution for an artist shaped as much by Bowie, Cohen, and Dylan as by Arctic Monkeys, Nick Cave, and the echoes of Britpop.

This is a track that doesn’t rush to impress. Instead, it reveals itself in layers, growing from an a cappella seed, written without an instrument, to a densely textured world of synth pulses, smoky organ chords, and a bassline that pulses like a low-voltage current under the skin. That backstory matters: Matt-Felix wrote the melody first, then added the track’s skeleton layer by layer, culminating in the bass, which ended up becoming the song’s emotional core. The result is a recording that feels handmade, intentionally raw and atmospheric.

Vocally, Cold With Desire sees Matt-Felix shifting shape with ease. His voice drifts from hushed introspection into falsetto flights, echoing the emotional dissonance at the song’s heart. There’s a calm intensity in his delivery that feels incredibly lived-in. Lyrics like “Is it love? Is it hate? / Is it the mixture that you don’t want on your plate?” show a writer who isn’t afraid to sit in the grey areas, writing from the blur between clarity and confusion.

That theme, emotional uncertainty, is everywhere in the track. The title is a contradiction in itself: cold with desire. That internal conflict plays out across the chorus’s repeated mantra: “You’re cold like a fire, and your flames take me higher.” The duality runs deep, painting a picture of infatuation that burns and freezes in equal measure.

But then comes the gut punch. The final part of the song shifts gear entirely:
“Twenty years to pack a bag / Twenty years to get it right / Twenty years I lost myself / Fifteen more and I was gone.”
It’s a devastating reflection, delivered almost like a confessional, and it breaks open the emotional gravity of the track. What seemed like a dissection of a relationship reveals itself as a wider meditation on time, identity, and what it costs to stay, or to leave.

Matt-Felix isn’t just another indie hopeful with a moody sound and a vintage pedalboard. He’s a genuine songwriter, one who draws from an eclectic personal history, Anglo-French heritage, formative years in Bali, and filters it into something that feels refreshingly left-field but emotionally grounded. He writes in diary entries, in fragments, in thoughts, letting the songs find their own form. And it shows.

Cold With Desire follows last month’s Change, a strong track in its own right, but this one feels like a statement. Moody, magnetic, and brimming with texture, it shows Matt-Felix as a producer, a performer, and most crucially, a storyteller.

FFO: Nick Cave, James Blake, Arctic Monkeys
Recommended Track: Cold With Desire
Front Row Tip: This is the kind of artist who’ll end up headlining festivals with a string section. Catch the intimacy now—before it’s sold out.