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Kendoll Embarks On A New Sonic Style With ‘Headlights
BETA This is a BETA experience. opt-out here Business Hollywood & Entertainment Kendoll Embarks On A New Sonic Style With ‘Headlights’ ‘Headlights’ is the first step in Kendoll departing from her signature high-energy club sound to create music she feels emotionally connected to. By Lisa Kocay ,
Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Lisa Kocay covers electronic dance music. Follow Author Jul 30, 2026, 06:24am EDT Updated Jul 30, 2026, 06:26am EDT --:-- / --:-- This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . It begins calmly, set in an airy sonic atmosphere. The bassline slowly forms, growing louder as the song progresses. Whirling synths follow, transitioning the track to an infectious bassline accompanied by spellbinding vocals that evoke a sense of longing.
The track continues in its texturally varied sonic structure. Once the buildup comes to a close with scratching synths, the vocals become clearer, demanding the listener’s attention before the drop. The bassline once again takes center stage with groove-inducing beats.
These are the sounds of “ Headlights ” by Kendoll.
The track, which dropped on July 17, is notable for more than just its earworm tendencies: it marks a new sonic era for Kendoll . The tastemaker, legally known as Kendall Wyman, is traditionally known for her party-ready, mainstage-oriented house music. “Headlights” differs from that style by exploring the sounds that were foundational to her discovery of dance music, which she says were UK garage and UK house. During this creative process, she realized she wanted to put more emotion into her music, rather than focus on what people want to party to.
“[‘Headlights’] actually is a huge, very pivotal point in my career,” Wyman says. “I used to write a lot of ‘bangers’ and high-energy stuff for people to party to, and I feel really disconnected from that now, being tired of partying and clubbing, [and] being sober. I want to be able to emotionally connect to my music. There’s not a whole lot of musicality to my previous releases, and [‘Headlights’] has got this vibey, emotional feeling to it. I haven't really put much out like that before, and I've always wanted to. I feel like this is the first time that I've been able to get that.”
“Headlights,” the sonic storyteller says, was written as something she would want to listen to while snowboarding, a hobby she is passionate about as she almost became a professional snowboarder. The record’s sound is quite a departure from her previous signature style, as her former tracks were created solely with the club in mind. While that mindset is still part of her creative process, albeit a small one, she puts her emotions at the forefront, fusing the two for the first time on “Headlights.” Wyman adds that her forthcoming releases are created similarly and also feature more musicality, something she has been working on by studying music theory and experimenting with different instruments over the last few years, when she was less active in her music career.
The powerhouse producer continues to expand her creative footprint by also starting a vlog, also known as a video blog. Wyman says she and her all-women team have been working on creating episodes for each stop on her tour, featuring candid behind-the-scenes moments and clips of Wyman and her friends snowboarding and skateboarding. The sonic stylist adds that she is scoring the vlog episodes, which are each about 20 minutes long.
Though she recognizes that the YouTube vlog era has been over for years, she believes that creating these vlogs will show a more authentic version of herself than other popular content formats nowadays. “I feel like there’s a lot of authenticity missing in content coming from artists these days, and it’s not the artist's fault,” she says. “We were thrown into having to be these content creators all of a sudden. And for me, personally, I feel like the way for me to connect with people the best is to do this follow-around, vlog-style content, where I'm not really doing anything different. I'm not putting on a performance for the camera. It's like the camera's there, and it's witnessing what I'm doing behind the scenes.”
The Monster Energy -sponsored producer adds that she will also have vlogs of artists touring with Dollhouse , her label, to launch the imprint’s media arm. She says she is taking Dollhouse very seriously at this time, and she now views it as more than just a way to release her music. Her vision for the label is to have it be a collective of artists, an event company and a media outlet. She also aims to support burgeoning artists with Dollhouse, saying it’s more difficult to break into the industry now than it was when she joined.
“This is just the beginning of what I expect Dollhouse to be and what it’s going to look like for me as an artist,” Wyman says. “I'm kind of stepping out of that mainstream lane and combining the things that I love to do, like snowboarding. I have a tour coming up where I'm going to be playing at some motorsport events, and I hope to do that with skateboarding and all sorts of extreme sports because that's what I love. That's my second passion. I'm going to be filming a lot of it.”
The artist says she plans to get involved in more events that cater to music lovers seeking experiences beyond just going to a club. She believes there’s a “hole in the industry right now” for alternative events. Wyman says clubs, which are often expensive to attend, don’t offer much more than a dark room filled with “a bunch of drunk people on the dance floor.”
“I want there to be more to my events, and I want to bring back a sense of community,” she adds. “That’s been a huge thing that's been missing from the scene for a long time, and it's why I felt disconnected from what I've been doing. So instead of stepping away entirely, I'm trying to be the change that you want to see in t...
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