CS Hellmann's 'In My Head' is a beautiful collision of confession and cinematic darkness

CS Hellmann’s new two-track EP 'In My Head' are a pair of songs pulled from the space between self-reckoning and restless ambition. It’s a stunningly focused step forward for the Nashville artist, who has spent the past few years chiseling a world where shadowy synths, bruised honesty, and wide-open atmosphere blur into something unmistakably his own.

And at the centre of it all is the creative chemistry between Hellmann and producer Jared Corder, a partnership that’s become one of East Nashville’s most quietly compelling collaborations. Corder’s fingerprints are everywhere: vast, panoramic sound design, textural percussion, and the sense that each track unfurls in slow motion.

The title track 'In My Head' takes on cinematic gloom and sets it spinning. Built on retro synths, bright-but-haunting guitar phrases, and a rhythmic fog that feels lifted from a dream, the song centres on the tug-of-war between hope and fatigue. The decision to pair Hellmann’s low register with an AI-generated high counterpart creates a ghostly duality, like hearing two versions of the same person argue across dimensions. It’s daring, strange, and utterly captivating.

While the EP’s closer 'Love I Left Behind' hits with the weight of a confession whispered into a storm. Hellmann’s baritone moves like a heavy exhale over eerie guitar swells and a percussive undercurrent stitched from both live drums and handmade samples. It’s a song that traces the outline of a moment when clarity arrives uninvited and irreversible.

What makes this EP so thrilling is how assured it feels. These songs are tighter, more intentional, more emotionally charged than anything he has put out before. You can hear an artist unafraid to experiment, examine himself, and stretch the boundaries of dark indie-pop into new terrain.

If 'In My Head' is the prologue to a new full-length era, then we’re on the edge of something big. CS Hellmann is crafting his own nocturnal universe, and this EP is a sign that he’s just beginning to explore its depths.