Molly Healey pushes orchestral music into the future with ‘White Noise’

Molly Healey has always thrived at the intersections of sound. Known for “bringing the orchestra to the rock show,” the multi-instrumentalist and composer has spent the last decade carving out a space where strings, synths, and beats collide in unexpected, electrifying ways. With her latest single “White Noise”, Healey proves once again that orchestral music doesn’t need to live in concert halls. It can pulse, shimmer, and move.

Taken from her forthcoming LP With the Wind: An Orchestral Dance Music Suite, “White Noise” is a reimagined version of a track originally featured on her 2019 album Circles. But it’s an evolution. Healey layers violin, cello, synth, and voice over propulsive rhythms, creating a sound that is at once cinematic and intensely visceral.

At its core, “White Noise” is deeply personal, exploring self-loathing and loneliness in an age dominated by technology. Yet even in its introspection, there’s movement, a danceable heartbeat running through the strings and beats that makes the track as kinetic as it is contemplative. Healey describes it as “a song I’m deeply connected with; the lyrics are personal, the string arrangements are my modus operandi, and the mood comes from my dreamscapes when I close my eyes at night.”

Recorded entirely in her home studio, the new version was shaped with beats and FX from Dave Tough, mixing by Tyler Norris, and mastering by Duncan Ferguson. An animated music video is also in the works, promising to extend the track’s otherworldly sonic palette into the visual realm.

With the Wind as a whole exemplifies what Healey calls Orchestral Dance Music (ODM): a fusion of emotive strings and danceable beats that spans trance, downtempo, and trip-hop. The album moves fluidly between moods and textures, anchored by her signature string arrangements and soulful vocals. It’s the kind of ambitious, immersive project only an artist with Healey’s imagination and technical prowess could realize.

“White Noise” is a statement. In Healey’s hands, orchestral music is a living, breathing, moving thing, capable of capturing the complexities of modern life while making you want to dance.