AWITW’s latest release, Valley Girl, moves like a neon breeze—always forward, always glowing—each track slipping into the next with that quiet, lived‑in confidence of someone who’s finally figured out that reflection doesn’t have to mean stopping.
There’s this gentle push to the whole album, like AWITW is saying, “Yeah, look back if you need to, but don’t pitch a tent there.” The synths feel like they’re in motion even when they’re soft, like they’re carrying something with them—some old feeling, some half-remembered version of you—polishing it into something lighter as they go. It’s the kind of record that makes you feel like you’re driving through your own thoughts at golden hour, windows down, not rushing, just letting the road do what it does.
And part of why that motion feels so natural is because AWITW—A Walk Into The Woods - has been shaping the emotional vocabulary of retrowave and dreamwave for over a decade. He’s one of those artists who never treated the genre like a nostalgia museum; he treated it like a living, breathing thing that could still grow. From his early mood‑drenched releases to the more narrative‑driven projects of the last few years, he’s always chased that intersection where memory becomes momentum. So when Valley Girl turns inward, it doesn’t sink—it banks. Like a plane tilting just enough to show you a new horizon instead of looping back to the runway. AWITW has always used introspection as fuel, not friction, and here those soft pads and warm basslines don’t hold you in place—they nudge you forward.
The title track, “Valley Girl,” is where that philosophy really crystallizes. It’s dreamy, sure, but not in a way that dissolves into haze. There’s a pulse to it, a sense of someone stepping into their own story with a little more courage than they had the day before. AWITW’s melodies have always had this uncanny ability to feel both familiar and newly discovered, like a memory you didn’t realize you’d misplaced. Here, that quality becomes the emotional spine of the album. The track doesn’t just shimmer; it moves, gently insisting that longing and forward motion can coexist.
“Running Wild,” especially with Ross Lustre’s vocals, widens the emotional frame. Lustre brings a human warmth that threads perfectly through AWITW’s production, giving the track the feeling of a late‑night conversation you didn’t expect to have but absolutely needed. And when the instrumental version appears later, it doesn’t feel redundant—it feels like the emotional blueprint beneath the words, a reminder that the feelings were always there, even before they were spoken aloud. The back half of the album—“Your Glowing Hands,” “Eidolons,” “Here Together,” “Now Playing”—leans into that same ethos. Even the most reflective tracks feel like they’re gliding toward something, not away from it.
Taken as a whole, Valley Girl feels like a small, luminous chapter in AWITW’s ongoing project of turning memory into motion. It’s not a grand statement album; it’s a personal one, a quiet recalibration of self‑confidence told through synths that glow rather than blaze. But that’s exactly why it lands. It trusts the listener to sit with their own reflections without getting stuck in them. It trusts that forward motion doesn’t have to be loud to be real. And somewhere in that trust, the album becomes something rare: a retrowave record that doesn’t just look back at the past—it carries it forward, gently, as if it's worth keeping. Honestly, listening to it feels like listening to the wind—soft, steady, always moving, even when you’re standing still.
The album can be purchased here: Valley Girl | AWITW
