A Story in Every Window: Listening with JVLY

The city at night has a way of pulling you into its quiet mysteries. When I walk through the streets, I can’t help but notice the glow behind windows — soft light, half-drawn curtains, a fleeting shadow. It’s in those moments I start to wonder: What kind of life is unfolding behind the glass? What kind of heartache? What kind of joy?

There are so many windows. So many stories. So many feelings suspended just out of reach. “When you look at a high-rise in the city, there’s a different story in every window. SUNDER paints the story from one of those windows.” That line stuck with me the first time I read it — because it feels exactly like what I’ve always felt.

Australian artist JVLY captures exactly that kind of emotional undercurrent in his new EP SUNDER — a project that feels like the soundtrack to those imagined lives. His music lets you drift, lets you dream, lets you sink into quiet introspection. The textures are soft, almost tender, and the atmosphere he creates feels suspended between memory and possibility.

Raised on the contrast between nature and suburbia in Australia, JVLY has been carving out a space for his unique blend of soulful electronics and ambient storytelling. Over the past few months, he’s slowly revealed the world of SUNDER piece by piece — with singles like “SOUTH,” “LOCUM,” “DROWNING IN MY ROOM,” and “WALKED THE SUN” offering fragments of something larger. Now, with the release of the full EP and its final track, “IT’S FINE / SOJU ON THE MOON,” we finally see the full picture.

“It’s five songs that are all parts of a whole story,” he explains. “Each song links to the next, and the end of the last song links back to the start of the first, so it can play in an infinite loop. The theme came from the cycles we find ourselves in — the situations, stages, and mental states we move through over time.”

“If ‘WALKED THE SUN’ is the last day of SUNDER, then ‘IT’S FINE / SOJU ON THE MOON’ is the first night,” he continues. “It’s the only song on the record where I didn’t have to write lyrics down — they just came out as I was trying to find the melody. Even the spoken word in the second part (SOJU ON THE MOON) was freestyled on the spot. I kept the imperfections because there was a rawness to it that felt right.” There are no final lines in stories like this. Only the slow fading of one feeling into another, like night slipping into day.

header photo by Demi Butler

‘SUNDER’ is available here: bfan.link/sunder-ep