serpentwithfeet: a love song sung into the murk
The first single from the Sentinel EP sets a pleading vocal inside murky programming and sends him back to the choir. It is his first release for One Little Independent.
BY JOLT Staff · SEP 24 2026 · 1 min readserpentwithfeet has made a love song that kneels. 'sentinel' takes the choir music he grew up on and drops it into a murk of programming, with the voice pleading from inside. The EP follows December 4 on One Little Independent.
Wise grew up in Baltimore with a Christian bookstore on one side of the house and a choir director on the other, and sang in the Maryland State Boychoir before training toward opera. Blisters (2016) put him on Tri Angle; soil (2018), DEACON (2021) and GRIP (2024) set gospel, classical and R&B against each other. Sentinel is his first release for One Little Independent after nearly a decade on Secretly Canadian.
“I was thinking about homoeroticism and the ways that men socialize when theyʼre isolated. Then I started thinking about patriarchy. One of the ways itʼs sustained is because men instinctively know their role. Whether youʼre the alpha or the beta, whatever those words mean, you know where you fit on the rung. Another grown man is willing to genuflect, to yield responsibility or become a little less autonomous because somebody else carries more power or privilege. For me, that feels like religion. It made me wonder what happens when we experience that erotically. What happens when we willingly let someone hold our heart because of the way they move through the world?”
He co-produced the title track with Brandon Juhan and Rahm, and taped a live version in Pacific Northwest woods for FERN, a new nature-based performance platform. The EP runs seven tracks and closes with 'puckish', featuring TYGAPAW. He has said he was thinking about homoeroticism, how men socialize when they are isolated, then patriarchy: what it means to hand someone your heart because of the way they move through the world.
That thinking is audible in the vocal, which leads and will not sit still: it cracks, reaches, asks. Under it the programming stays low and unsettled, closer to IDM than to gospel, and the murk never quite clears. A shanty's tug runs under the phrasing.
DEACON and GRIP fans will take it on the first play, and so will anyone who likes R&B with the seams showing.
The flaw is the murk: on a vocal this exposed it reads as obstruction rather than mystery, and at 3:26 the track ends just as it opens. Four out of five. The fog is a choice, and the pleading survives it.
