L.A. duo Peppermint Heaven have spent the better part of a decade building a sound rooted in 80s-inspired retro-pop, so it's fitting that their new single tackles one of the most forward-looking questions in music right now: where does AI fit into the creative process, and what does it mean for human artistry?
It's the accompanying video, though, that really elevates "A.I" into something worth talking about. Fully animated and genuinely inventive, the visuals lean into the song's central tension rather than illustrating it literally — there's a strange, slightly uncanny beauty to the way the animation moves, oscillating between something warmly human and something colder, more synthetic. It's a smart visual language for a track asking exactly that question: to what extent can AI be considered human?
Sonically, Peppermint Heaven stay true to the sound that's earned them comparisons across outlets like CLASH and Electronic Groove — leftfield, retro-leaning synth-pop with a melodic confidence that's carried them to over 25 million listeners across Spotify and TikTok. But "A.I" feels like the duo using that established sound as a vehicle for something more pointed and current, rather than resting on nostalgia alone. The video is clearly having a resonance, with nearly 80k views already..
What makes the video particularly effective is its restraint — it doesn't moralise or land on easy answers about AI's place in music. Instead, like the best Sci-Fi storytelling it borrows from, it sits in the ambiguity, letting the unsettling and the beautiful coexist on screen.
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