Indigo Rose is going through a breakup. A fictional one, by the looks of it, but the Las Vegas musician is pissed nonetheless.
At a diner splashed in a tapestry of ’80s decor, she argues with her lukewarm lover. They reach a stalemate in the conversation, neither sure which avenue to take … and then the punchy 808s of Rose’s single “Headcase” kick in.
Rose struts the streets of Downtown in the music video, luggage in hand, as a retro version of her, sporting David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane lightning bolt across her face and a curly mohawk, smoothly intones, “I feel you’re lying to me/I had to see for myself/Take you off of the shelf/I don’t need you no more/Cause you’re a headcase, baby.”
The song is about a “situationship,” Rose explains during a Zoom call from her bedroom. “Nobody wants to talk about what they’re actually going through in relationships, because they don’t know how to really talk about it,” says the 26-year-old singer-songwriter born Carly Greathouse. “I have to write from a perspective that everybody can relate to. With music, you are that voice for people.”
The singer never set out to make a pop song, as her spellbinding, moody R&B work might suggest. But Rose couldn’t resist leaving her self-professed “Indigo effect” all over the ’80s beat of “Headcase.” “I think vintage sh*t is kind of my niche,” she says. “I’ve never really been a person that likes everything that everybody likes.
I was able to find my sound and my style through that.”
Before uprooting to Las Vegas in 2019, Rose was an emerging name in her hometown of Cleveland. As a kid, she joined the prestigious touring child choir Singing Angels. By 18, she had released an acoustic EP titled The Indigo Effect, and in 2018, she dropped Vibrant, an intimate EP featuring slow-burning grooves like “Summer Child” and “Wise About It.”
When the pandemic hit, painting became a complementary outlet to her music. Downtown’s Escape Artist Studios even hosted Rose as a resident artist this spring, reinforcing that she can rock a show at the Beverly Theater just as hard as she can stage a dope gallery reception.
“If I decide tomorrow that I want to be a rock star, I will be a rock star, and I will slay that sh*t,” she says. “If I want to do pop music, then hit you with an R&B song and then hit you with an acoustic after that, it’s whatever I feel, because that’s what I want to present.”
Rose has made a spectacle of her dual artistry. At one gig, she even painted onstage as an anonymous artist, only to introduce herself as the opening act later on. Identity matters a great deal to the singer, who says she often feels split between Carly and Indigo. She’s aware of just how easily one’s sense of self can be erased when they’re in the spotlight.
“They paint artists like we don’t have feelings. They think that we’re perfect, and we just sh*t out magical music and art,” she says. “But if we weren’t this real person, none of this would come out of us.”
Indigo Rose linktr.ee/shesindigorose
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