Photo Credit: Sir Taegen C’aion Harris
Love Spells doesn’t just write songs—he builds slow-burning, heart-ravaged worlds where vulnerability isn’t just welcome, it’s the entire architecture. The 20-year-old artist, born Sir Taegen C’aion Harris, has officially released his latest spellbook: a stunning six-track EP titled The Love I Showed You Was Yours To Keep, out now via Loveless/ADA Worldwide. If you’ve ever believed that heartbreak is its own kind of religion, this project might just be your sacred text.
From the moment you press play, the EP unfolds like a confessional whispered into the void—haunted, gorgeous, and deeply felt. Love Spells has always had a gift for conjuring raw intimacy through feather-light production and vocals so soft they feel like a secret. This time, he elevates it to a cinematic level, pairing his trademark emotional precision with storytelling that hits like a memory you didn’t realize you still carried.
To mark the EP’s arrival, Love Spells dropped the music video for “Bones And All,” a standout track that channels the eerie romance of Luca Guadagnino’s cannibal love story of the same name. It’s more than just a reference—it’s a reimagining. In the video, shot with the grit of a ‘90s indie film, Love Spells and a lover drift through city streets and countryside backroads, two beautiful fugitives with a hunger that’s emotional and, maybe, something darker. “I made ‘Bones And All’ to reflect one of my favorite movies of all time,” he explains. “It resonates so deeply with me because I see in it tones of an eventual all-consuming love and devotion like no other.” It’s desire at the edge of destruction, and it’s mesmerizing.
But that’s just one side of this shape-shifting EP. The Love I Showed You Was Yours To Keep is awash with themes of mental health, fleeting love, and the ache of growing through it all. Tracks like “How?” (which drew early attention from KCRW and Spotify’s Lorem playlist) and “Reach Out and Kiss Me” (a BBC Radio 1 and Beats 1 favorite) capture the swirling disorientation of loving deeply in an age of disconnection. It’s romantic, yes—but also deeply existential.
In a quote that basically sums up the entire project’s emotional core, Love Spells reflects:
“This project is a reflection of a chapter in my life that was both eye-opening and emotionally intense. It captures the feeling of discovering a kind of love that shifts your understanding of connection—beautiful, consuming, and ultimately fleeting.”
This is bedroom pop for the end of the world. A mixtape made in the aftermath of something big—maybe a breakup, maybe a revelation. Or maybe both.
If you’ve been lucky enough to catch Love Spells live this spring—either supporting Sharon Van Etten and The Attachment Theory on their North American tour, or at his sold-out headline debut at Union Pool in Brooklyn—you already know this isn’t an artist chasing the hype. He’s building something slow, honest, and impossible to look away from. Something with teeth, but also tenderness.
The final tour stop wraps tomorrow night in San Francisco at August Hall. After that? Who knows. But one thing’s certain: the love he showed us was ours to keep.
“Bones and All” was inspired by one of your favorite films. Can you tell us more about how that film influenced not just the song but the overall mood of the album?
That movie put into perspective a lot of my own feelings about the intensity of my love for someone – how consuming it can be (no pun intended haha). Even the cinematography felt romantic; it genuinely made me feel in love.
You describe “Lovers Only” as a song that explores the pain of a faltering love. What specific experiences or emotions did you draw from to capture that feeling in the lyrics?
I felt betrayed at first, honestly – but that was because I was looking for something to feel negatively about. Nothing ever really went wrong, it just didn’t work out, so I convinced myself I’d been tricked out of my time. But the truth is, she didn’t owe me anything, I was just searching for something to make it easier to move on.
The album title, *The Love I Showed You Was Yours To Keep*, suggests a sense of giving love freely without expecting it in return. How does that theme weave throughout the track list?
It’s really just me trying to understand that love, in itself, is a free thing – and all of these experiences happened at the cost of life, not love. It was a blessing to feel so deeply in those moments. All of the songs tell the story of me giving without the expectation of receiving, and vice versa. Fun fact: the title came shortly before I had to submit the project – almost like a final declaration to leave those feelings in the past, with the people they belong to. So when I speak of the EP title, I’m saying: it was yours when I gave it to you, and it was always yours before.
In “How?”, you touch on the confusion between lust and love. How do you think that kind of emotional conflict shapes relationships, and how did you convey that in the production of the track?
I think it makes you confront yourself and your own conflict of morality. Like, “hey, I don’t know if we just want sex from each other or not, but we’re still doing this”. And that’s not something soft in my eyes. So when I heard the beat from Sebraca, it instantly felt like the right time to express that thought.
Mental illness is a heavy topic to tackle in a song, but “The Illness” does so in a raw and honest way. Was it difficult for you to write and record such a deeply personal track?
It was really difficult to record because I was a bit scared of what my family would think if they heard the song haha. But I reminded myself that this is my therapy, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The writing felt more like a confession of emotions – the words were already there, just sitting in the back of my mind.
The lyric ‘If you mean it, then reach out to me’ in “Reach Out And Kiss Me” feels like a direct confrontation. Were you speaking to someone specific when writing that, or was it more of a universal plea?
I think it is a bit of both! The lyric is me literally saying, reach out to me if you say you miss me like you do
“I Can’t Let You Go In This Life” speaks to that cyclical feeling of not being able to let go, even when it no longer hurts. How do you personally break that cycle, or are you still caught in it?
I break the cycle by simply reminding myself that it’s okay to grieve love that’s been lost, but that grief shouldn’t haunt me forever. Until I can find appreciation for what happened, I know I haven’t fully grown from it.
This album seems to explore the darker, more haunting aspects of love. Was that a deliberate artistic choice, and how did you balance those heavier themes with the sonic elements of the record?
Yes it was on purpose because I had started to recognize darker aspects of love, and it felt like I was stuck in that space when I made the project. But that was my own fault – what happened to me romantically was actually the opposite of dark. My mind just took it there as an excuse to feel bitter, almost as a way to help me get over things.
If you could choose one lyric from this album that encapsulates the emotional core of the project, what would it be and why?
“I’ve tried I’ve tried I’ve tried but I can’t let you go in this life”
