This article appears in the pages of V125: Supermodel Summer, available to pre-order now at shop.vmagazine.com.

Mike Hadreas, at age 26, decided to take his life and art into his own hands, his own mouth. In doing so, he recast what we understand as music into a weather of feeling and thinking, one where the body (queer, healing, troubled, wounded, possible and gorgeous) sings itself into its future. When listening to Perfume Genius, a powerful joy courses through me…in the velvet and smoky bass and synth that verge on synesthesia, the scores at times a violet and tender heat in the ear. If sound is, after all, a negotiation/ disruption of time, then in the soft storm of Set My Heart On Fire, the future is here. Because it was always here.