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For his second full-length LP and most realized release as Serebii yet, the artist had one thing he had to overcome first: he was “terrified” of himself.
After establishing the Serebii project with several albums worth of trancing neo-soul and shape-shifting ballads, much of it done in collaboration with fellow New Zealander Arjuna Oakes, Mower had no lack of confidence in his musical abilities. But much of Mower’s focus in the past was on instruments and production—swirling, cinematic instrumentals under his own name or funky art-pop jams with others on vocals. On Dime, however, Mower knew he wanted to push forward with his own singing placed center stage. “It’s exposing,” Mower says of releasing music so heavy on his singing.
Mower, it turns out, has nothing to be afraid of. He has a gentle croon deceptive in its power—on a song like “Feet for Pegs,” for example, he lures you in with a Tropicalia guitar progression, but carries the song on vocal subtleties that pass like wisps of smoke. And using that voice, he’s created an album unlike anything he’s done before, rolling seamlessly from track to track—not just a collection of songs but a singular project conceived to work together as a unified statement. “That was the approach with Dime,” Mower says. “To really focus on putting something together that sounded like it was done in one sitting. One chapter.”
Serebii and his band also released a jazzy-soulful live performance video featuring swirling cinematic instrumentals for first single "Might As Well Be Watching" and an endearing video for track "Verrans Corner," where Mower is shrunken to the size of a pea and sent out floating on a toy sailing boat, looking every bit like the skipper for top local sailing team Emirates Team New Zealand.
Here he shares the story behind his latest live video for "Goji":
"After three years apart, myself and dear friend Skud Gumbosi decided to do what we both missed dearly and write music together. We spent a good portion of the day working on this Bossa groove with some chords Skud pulled from his back pocket. By the end of the session we both knew we had something special but felt the ideas were far too sluggish for our liking.
As you can imagine the only downside to this is that you’d need to start the song from scratch in this new BPM and key, but that meant we would get to spend another day in each other’s company, and so we did just that.
This song is about our flat cat Goji, she was a street cat from Hamilton, New Zealand, she accidentally ate a box of weed brownies and we believe she has been stoned since."
"Dime" started as a finger-plucked guitar melody in a strange tuning that led to Serebii putting the whole song together in a day. It’s a reflection on the feeling of having been cast into the world with little more than some loose change and ending up back where you started, wondering what it was all about.
On new album single/title track "Dime" Serebii (aka Callum Mower) layers vocal harmonies on a sparse finger-plucked guitar for a delicate two minute track.
With his crooning falsetto Mower sings “Thought I’d never look back. Running a lie to keep on track.”
The typically quiet and humble artist recognized what he had captured in the song, and named it appropriately—a dime, as in a perfect ten. “I just remember being like, that’s a dime. I got my dime,” said Callum.
NZ-based Serebii releases this track ahead of upcoming LP Dime out March 28.
Serebii, the New Zealand-based composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist announces new album Dime out March 28, 2025 while releasing a video + single for "Verrans Corner." KCRW premiered the track.
Serebii says of the new single - - >
"The track was co-written with Leith Sye Towers and came out of a session we had last summer. Calling it a session feels a bit odd. We’ve known each other since childhood, and music was just another thing we picked up along the way and interfaced with together. There’s a healthy regression that occurs when you work with a childhood friend. You can tap into the playfulness and naivety while still leveraging the insights and growth you've gained over the years. We approached this collaboration with the calm, comical, and unflappable sense of persistence afforded by our shared history. This sense permeated the track, from the ad hoc and primitive piano playing to the apparitional ornamentation and the lyrical allusions, all pointing to a nondescript circular issue trying to fit through an even less descript square hole."
The single is accompanied by a video, which Serebii continues, “The video aims to be childish, blending playfulness and grandeur. I’d never sailed a ship before, neither had I shrunk to the size of a small figurine. It was mostly an excuse to get out into lush landscapes in Aotearoa, New Zealand with a group of friends. I am extremely proud of how this video came out with such a small budget and timeline.”
Dime is availabe for pre-order and both "Verrans Corner" & "Might As Well Be Watching" are available for stream at this link.
Serebii, the New Zealand-based composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist announces new album Dime out March 28, 2025 while releasing the first single, "Might As Well Be Watching."
Serebii explains the story behind first album single "Might As Well Be Watching" out today:
"Observation and involvement often come hand in hand, time and again I experience some form of conflict with feeling seen and heard, accepting that sometimes being in the background is the most natural place to be. I wrote this song towards the end of summer in 2023 in my home studio in Titirangi, Auckland, New Zealand, I finished mixing it in January 2024. I remember this being the first time I felt the urge to have strings on a record. I reached out to Arjuna Oakes who had just settled in London at the time, he circled back with some incredible charts and demo strings, he said.. you need to do this properly and get good string players. We reached out to Tom Broome who got together the right people and we went on to do the thing."
Dime is availabe for pre-order and "Might As Well Be Watching" is available for stream at this link.