KiKi Holli & The Remedy release ‘Something About You,’ a five-track EP of dream pop and darkwave produced by Grammy nominee Ethan Allen
KiKi Holli spent years telling other people’s stories on stage. Now she is telling her own, five songs at a time. The Los Angeles artist’s project KiKi Holli & The Remedy released Something About You this week, a five-track EP that moves through dream pop, synth textures, darkwave, rock and adult contemporary without ever losing its emotional thread. It follows her single “Running Out of Time” and lands with the confidence of an artist who has stopped auditioning and started arriving.
The backstory earns that confidence. Born Kirsten Holly Smith in Pittsburgh, Holli trained in voice and theater before co-writing and starring in Forever Dusty, the Dusty Springfield musical that opened Off-Broadway at New World Stages to praise from The New York Times and The Village Voice before runs in Los Angeles and London. That theatrical instinct is the EP’s secret architecture. Each song unfolds like a scene. Nothing is filler.
A Partnership at the Center
The Remedy is not just a band name. It is partly a nod to The Cure, one of Holli’s touchstones alongside Stevie Nicks, Bowie and Prince, and partly a tribute to her studio partner, two-time Grammy-nominated producer Ethan Allen, whose credits include Ben Harper, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Tricky. Allen produced, mixed and co-wrote the EP, wrapping Holli’s voice in layered, immersive atmospheres that never smother the feeling underneath.
Their chemistry has a charming ritual behind it: a vintage hourglass sits in Allen’s Silver Lake studio, and the pair sometimes flip it at the start of a session as a reminder to capture the moment. That urgency is audible everywhere here.
The title track opens the record in a haze of longing and control, Holli’s vocal balancing restraint against power. “The Garden” lets in the light, all acoustic guitars, bright keys and falsetto, a song about holding on to something that refuses to fade. Then comes the EP’s boldest swing: a reimagining of the INXS classic “Don’t Change,” stripped to delicate guitar picking and moody strings, trading the original’s arena rush for intimacy and finding new tenderness inside a song most artists would not dare touch.
“So Far Away” is the emotional centerpiece, sitting in the ache of distance over nostalgic guitars and a groove-heavy bassline, while closer “Brand New Day” ends things fierce and seductive, a rock-fueled exhale about planting your feet and starting over.
The Proof Point
Something About You arrives on a genuine run. Her single “WISH” landed on Atwood Magazine’s list of the best songs of 2025, “WIN U OVER” drew notice from Billboard, and the project has passed half a million streams, built entirely independently.
Holli first turned heads with a grief-soaked rendition of Roxy Music’s “More Than This,” and the covers she chooses keep functioning as mission statements: songs about holding on, sung by someone who has done a lot of holding on. She has been open about the grind behind the glow, the years of waiting tables between backers’ auditions, the near-quitting, the village it took.
That is what gives this EP its quiet authority. In a landscape crowded with algorithm-chasing singles, Holli is building the old way: a body of work, a signature sound, a creative partnership deep enough to have rituals. A full-length album is already promised for late fall or early spring, which makes Something About You feel like exactly what its title suggests, an introduction that lingers. Press play, let the hourglass flip, and get lost in it.
