Dave Curl Takes His Guitar to a Volcano for the New Single “Julia”

Some artists shoot their videos in a studio with a green screen and call it a day. Dave Curl flew to a volcanic island in the Atlantic, sat down in the arid hills with an acoustic guitar, and let the landscape do half the storytelling. That’s the setup for “Julia,” his acoustic dream-pop single arriving August 12, and the visuals shot across Fuerteventura, Spain, are the kind of thing you notice before you even hear a note.

The official lyric video, filmed by Loic Michel, opens with aerial footage gliding over broad stretches of volcanic terrain, all warm browns and ochres under low golden light. Curl shows up in a white shirt, seated among the hills, playing his guitar and mostly facing the landscape rather than the lens. It’s a small figure inside an enormous frame, and that contrast runs through the whole piece. Wide shots of ridges and ravines give way to overhead drone passes that trace the contours of the land, then cut to closer performance shots, then to coastal and underwater footage where the color shifts to pale blue skies and dark blue-green water.

What ties it together is restraint. Michel’s editing leans on long takes, slow fades, and dissolves instead of quick cuts. Several transitions layer two images at once, blending Curl into the terrain through double exposures that leave everything looking a little hazy and half-remembered. That dreamlike quality isn’t accidental. It’s the visual equivalent of what the song is reaching for, a track about fleeting moments and the memories that stick around long after they’re over.

“Julia” came from a chance meeting at a surf camp in Portugal, and Curl built the whole thing around an idea he borrowed from The Little Prince, that what’s important can’t be seen with the eyes alone. You can hear that in the writing. The song floats on peaceful guitar, a moving bassline, and vocals that stay genuine without reaching for anything flashy. It’s more floaty and heart-on-sleeve than a lot of his earlier work, which tends toward folk-pop-rock with a rougher alternative edge. Here he lets the softer instincts take over.

The choice of Fuerteventura fits a pattern for Curl, who has a habit of picking filming spots that most musicians wouldn’t bother hauling gear to. He once shot a video at a medieval watchtower on the cliffs of Portugal, and he’s filmed alongside contemporary dancers and other collaborators in places that ask a lot more of a shoot than a rehearsal space would. Honestly, he’ll tell you himself that the locations get increasingly impractical, which is part of the appeal. When your songs are built on small, sincere moments, a backdrop that feels vast and a little untouched does the emotional lifting a plain set never could.

A little context on who’s behind the guitar. Dave Curl is a Swiss singer-songwriter with English-Australian roots, born and raised in Switzerland, and he’s been writing and performing his own material for over twenty years. He points to a volunteer stint as a gardener on Hawaii’s Big Island as the moment the whole thing crystallized, one of those trips where you leave home to figure out what you want to do when you get back. His music has been streamed more than 2 million times and landed in over 2,000 Spotify playlists, and he’s played 200-plus shows that range from living-room concerts to festival headline slots.

The catalogue backing “Julia” is deeper than a casual listener might guess. His 2021 debut album Introducing pulled together earlier songs, including an acoustic take on “These Days,” and gave people an intimate first look at his writing. The 2022 EP Slave To Instinct dug into heavier material, obsession, false friends, the darker corners of the internet, gender identity, and its title track picked up airplay on independent radio in Germany and beyond. He followed with the single “Angel” and the EP Hold Me Close in 2023, and his most popular song, “Serenity,” came out of that same stretch, a personal track about letting go of someone.

“Julia” sits inside a fuller rollout, too. Curl has a lyric video, a music video, and an acoustic live version all planned around the release. The lyric video went live August 5 and works as a hybrid piece, part lyric video, part cinematic performance, previewing that same Fuerteventura footage with its mix of landscape and guitar. The single itself is the next chapter in a run of releases going back to 2021, not a one-off, which is worth keeping in mind with an artist who’s clearly playing a long game.

That long game might be the most interesting thing about him. Curl has spent two decades building a body of work without chasing whatever the algorithm rewarded that month, and “Julia” reads like proof that the songs which last tend to be the ones written for the right reasons. He turns train rides, coffee shops, and passing encounters into music, then finds a volcano or a watchtower to film it against.

You can hear “Julia” and follow the rest of it on his website, and keep up through Spotify, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. For now, “Julia” is up for pre-save ahead of its August 12 arrival.