Highlighting the lush, otherworldly side of the band’s repertoire, ‘By the Stars’ is the swooning new pop ballad from San Francisco’s Octavian Winters: a beautifully delicate contrast to the dark, angular post-punk of previous single, ‘Elements of Air’. Produced once again by William Faith, and releasing just ahead of the band’s appearance at Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Germany, ‘By the Stars’ moves with a slow, dreamlike pulse: toms beating softly under glimmering melodies, like distant heartbeats under an endless night sky. Lyricist and frontwoman Ria Aursjoen says:
“The song has the feel of a sea voyage. The images for me were always ones of the vastness of the sky and the sea, and the feeling of the magnificent beauty of the world. The call and answer vocals are like two people calling back and forth across a valley. It’s meant to encompass that feeling of transcendence when you take a meta view of life and of the natural world and just fall into the beautiful patterns of it all.”
Remarking on the song’s significance both to the band and their audience, drummer Randy Gzebb adds:
“I remember playing an all-ages show in Northern California, looked up mid-song and saw these two young goth girls at the front of the stage with tears streaming down their faces. That moment told me everything I needed to know about ‘By the Stars’. You know a song matters when it reaches people like that.”
Octavian Winters was born into the ghostly isolation of San Francisco, 2022. Their sound mirrors the surrealism of that time, weaving threads of the visceral and ethereal together into shimmering instrumental layers, with vocals that alternately soar and dive. Stephan Bryan Salit (guitar), Randy Gzebb (drums), Jay Denton (bass) and Ria Aursjoen (vocals, keyboards) together craft their sound into a texture all its own – of stories once told but half-remembered, under a dusk of shadows and stars, in an abandoned city beneath the winter moon.
Octavian Winters has gained a reputation for tightly crafted songs that range from spaciously dreamy to dark and driving, as well as exceptionally transporting live performances. In 2023 the band released their majestic debut EP, The Line or Curve, and are now preparing with producer William Faith for their sophomore EP release in the summer of 2026.
Live in concert, on Friday 22 May the band will perform on the first night of the prestigious Wave-Gotik-Treffen in Leipzig, Germany; having previously won over US festival crowds at New York’s A Murder of Crows in 2025. Recently (April 2026), Octavian Winters also completed a tour of the US West Coast with pillars of German post-punk, Pink Turns Blue; and have meanwhile been announced to appear at Tampa, Florida’s Absolution Fest in October.
‘By the Stars’, the new single from Octavian Winters, is out 13 May 2026 from Bandcamp, Spotify and most major digital music stores.
Photos By: David Kruschke
