It started with a mistake. Len Rivers forgot to mute a synthesized guitar track during a session, and Renee Paul couldn’t stop listening to it. That buried loop never made the final cut of “Broken Pieces,” their latest single, but it became the spark that drove the whole thing forward. “Sometimes the missing pieces shape the song the most,” Paul says. It’s the kind of line that sounds rehearsed until you hear the track and realize she means it literally.
Deco Halo has been building toward this moment for two decades, though “building” implies something more deliberate than what actually happened. Rivers and Paul first crossed paths when Paul answered an ad for backing vocals on Rivers’ band. They recorded, wrapped up, and didn’t speak for a year. Then Paul posted her own ad looking for a band, and Rivers was looking for a new singer. The timing was almost too clean. They launched Deco Halo as a full alternative rock outfit, toured clubs and venues across the circuit, and played until the band had run its course. What remained was the core, the two of them, and a decision that would reshape everything they did next.
“We decided to just write, and whatever comes will let us know what kind of song it wants to be,” Len Rivers explains. That philosophy, letting songs find their own identity rather than forcing them into a genre box, is what separates Deco Halo from acts that peak early and fade into formula. Their catalog, tracks like “Wrapped in You,” “New Thing,” “Phoenix,” “Hung Up,” and “Wonderland,” bounces between alt-pop, modern rock, and jazz-inflected arrangements without ever feeling scattered.
“Broken Pieces,” released January 30th, is their boldest move yet. Clocking in at three and a half minutes, it’s a full pivot into electropop territory, driven by a pulsing rhythm that hits harder than anything in their back catalog. Paul’s vocals cut through the production with real weight, and the chorus builds additively, layering elements until the whole thing feels massive. The song tackles unrequited love, but not the dramatic, cinematic version. This is the quieter kind, the slow ache of wanting someone who’s standing right there but emotionally unreachable. The writing is sharp, too. The same refrain keeps coming back but lands differently each time, shifting from “a bond I tried to make with you” to “a life I hoped to have with you,” quietly raising the stakes with each pass. The single is available now on all streaming platforms.
What’s striking about the track is how much restraint it shows. Deco Halo could easily oversaturate a song like this with production tricks, especially given the electropop framework, but every element feels intentional. The instrumentation is tight, the mix is clean, and the vocals sit exactly where they need to. It’s detailed, careful work from a duo that clearly cares deeply about craft without losing the raw feeling underneath.
That attention to craft extends to how they actually make their music. Rivers and Paul write and record constantly, releasing new material every couple of months. Their process involves session musicians scattered across the globe, a drummer in Spain, a guitarist in Brazil, keys recorded in Canada, horns tracked in England, strings laid down in the Netherlands. It’s a genuinely international operation, and that kind of collaboration naturally brings a range of textures and perspectives into the mix.
Their influences tell a similar story of range without randomness. Paul draws from Patty Griffin’s emotional directness and Sarah McLachlan’s melodic instincts, but also from the darker edges of Garbage and the genre-defying boldness of Raye. Rivers leans toward the theatrical, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Queen’s melodic ambition, and the sharp precision of St. Vincent. What connects all of it, they say, is intention. Strong writing. A clear point of view. Production that serves the emotional core instead of competing with it.
That emotional core is where Deco Halo lives. Their songs tend to sit in gray areas, the slow unraveling of relationships, the distance that builds between people who never quite say what they need to say. They’re not interested in tidy resolutions or anthemic declarations. “We’re not trying to fix anything,” the duo says. “We just want to give complicated feelings a soundtrack.”
It’s an honest pitch, and “Broken Pieces” delivers on it. The track doesn’t wrap its subject in metaphor or dress it up with false hope. It sits with the discomfort of loving someone you can’t reach and doesn’t pretend there’s a clean way out. For a duo that’s spent twenty years evolving from a rock band into something harder to categorize, that kind of emotional clarity feels earned.
Deco Halo is currently exploring live performance options for the summer, weighing whether to hit stages as a duo or bring a full band. Either way, new music keeps coming. They’ve made that much clear.
For anyone who’s ever felt too much or not enough, Deco Halo makes music for late nights, long drives, and the moments you can’t quite put into words. Check out more on their website, follow them on Instagram, and connect on Facebook.
