Somewhere between heartbreak and healing, The NOVA found their pulse. Their new EP, How Can I Love You?, feels like a late-night drive through memory — the windows half-open, the air heavy with salt and static, every song flickering between what was lost and what still burns. The band, born on the quiet shores of Panama City Beach, sound nothing like the place they come from. There’s a cinematic tension to their music, like Florida humidity trapped inside neon light. The NOVA’s mix of glossy pop and restless rock draws from The 1975 and The Band CAMINO, but it also carries something more elemental — a kind of spiritual homesickness that turns small emotions into tidal waves.
“Headspace” opens the record with an instant hit of adrenaline. The guitars roar like headlights cutting through fog, while Brady Hughes’ voice lands somewhere between a plea and a declaration. “I can’t get you out of my headspace,” he sings, and you believe him — not because it’s poetic, but because it sounds like someone trying to outrun a thought that keeps catching up. The chorus doesn’t explode so much as it unravels, each note peeling back another layer of self-defense.
Then comes “Back To You,” the record’s emotional center. Built around a rhythm that nods to Everybody Wants To Rule The World, it glides with the confidence of nostalgia. But listen closer and you’ll hear something bruised underneath. The synths shimmer like city lights reflected in a puddle, and the drums move with patient urgency. It’s the sound of looking at an old photograph and realizing you no longer recognize the person smiling back.
What makes How Can I Love You? quietly powerful is its refusal to chase perfection. The NOVA are not hiding behind studio polish; they are letting their seams show. Recorded mostly in Hughes’ home studio and refined by producer Nelson Pasada, the EP feels handcrafted, intimate, and deeply lived-in. The guitars hum like conversation, the vocals crack in the right places, and the production never tries to clean up the chaos. Each track lives in its own emotional temperature. Some ache, some exhale. There’s the sense that every lyric is part confession, part catharsis. Hughes doesn’t just sing about love; he sings about the moment it fractures into self-doubt. He turns small insecurities into gospel. On every listen, you can hear the band learning how to breathe through uncertainty together.
The NOVA’s sound thrives on contrasts — heavy guitars chasing airy synths, anthemic hooks wrapped around soft, uncertain truths. It’s music that belongs to the same lineage as modern pop-rock’s biggest dreamers, but it feels more human, less calculated. You can tell this band still builds songs from the ground up, testing ideas in small rooms, chasing what feels right rather than what sells.
By the time the final track fades, How Can I Love You? leaves behind more questions than answers. It doesn’t tie its stories neatly. Instead, it lingers like a conversation that should have ended hours ago but keeps finding new ways to circle back. You leave it with the sense that The NOVA are still becoming — still searching for the right words, still wrestling with the noise and quiet of their own hearts. That uncertainty is their magic. Where other bands might have settled for sheen, The NOVA chase sincerity. Their sound is clean but never sterile, emotional but never melodramatic. It’s the sound of three friends in a room, trying to make sense of something larger than themselves.
Featured Images: Artist Supplied
