Joyride the Stars is the debut project from Hearteyes, the latest artistic adventure from Sydney’s Maurice Santiago. Away from the melodic 90s house of his George Michelle project and the brooding post punk of Death Bells, Joyride the Stars is Santiago’s most unabashedly sentimental and openly emotional release yet. Channelling fellow pop iconoclasts The 1975, Lil Peep, 100 gecs and Ariana Grande, Hearteyes packages earnest, poignant honesty inside glistening, genreless tracks that feel thoroughly modern, implacably familiar and wholly distinct, dealing with themes of suicide, addiction and psychosis. Existing somewhere at the intersection between all these strands of popular music from the past decade, Hearteyes’ debut is difficult to define. Recorded across a period of four years between Sydney, Los Angeles and Berlin, Joyride The Stars is animated by this sense of openness and the realisation that boundaries in life are meaningless. It follows Hearteyes’ artistic impulses wherever they lead, from syrupy bubblegum pop to desperately lonely Instagram ballads to woozy, trap-bent dancefloor hits, reaching the bittersweet, cathartic bliss that comes from releasing yourself from past inhibitions.