MUSIC REVIEW | Thy Veils by Miah O'Malley

Night falls

It’s true

They say

Starlight is cold

Water calls

Gold dances in you

Night falls

Seeing true

Ablaze

Holding it all

Hearing the lyrics to "Secrets" for the first time, I felt suspended in a vast sea of stars. That moment when you’re alone at night, solitary yet faintly connected to everything in the universe, was embodied in this song. It’s one of my favorite feelings.

The sense of cosmic drift in "Secrets", and in Thy Veils’ other songs, stems from Alira Mun’s voice and lyrics. Her voice is haunting, celestial, otherworldly– like a transmission from beyond. Her words pulse with cosmic wonder, moving through Daniel Dorobanțu’s lush sonic landscapes. Their music exists within the realm of ambient electronic and experimental sound, shimmering at the edges of dream-pop and spiritual resonance. From Romania, the band creates firmly outside the mainstream Western commercial music industry.

I bought their album Neoradiant immediately, and though I was driving home from my day job in the thick of afternoon traffic, it evoked a sense of boundlessness and awe, a feeling that stayed with me as I drafted my short story, "We Were Home", published in Tethered Literary’s 2025 Summer Issue. In the story, a tidally locked planet tells of its scars, resilience, and eventual healing as it’s transformed by both human exploitation and the life that follows, until it finally claims a fragile but luminous sense of wholeness.

On Next Forever, Alira Mun shares vocal and lyricist credits alongside Maria Hojda’s mesmeric vocals, their voices weaving over a spare, hypnotic soundscape. Lines like “we’ll go upstream / along the strong eternal wind” hint at some kind of ascent, some kind of search for meaning. 

Neoradiant was like a journey through the cosmos, punctuated by longing and scored by Alira’s ethereal voice, and "Secrets" was my first waypoint as a traveler in that universe.

Photo screenshot from Thy Veils music video for Secrets, viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dseHv5edU-M

Miah O'Malley is a contributing member of the Tethered Literary community. Tethered Literary invites past contributors to share other literary and art offerings they have in the form of a book review, author interviews, or any kind of neat-o-keens.

Many Summer 2025 contributors sent us music-related lists that we featured in individual posts on our Instagram @tethered_literary. If you want to see all this music in one place, check out this playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32E4GdLk1BuevfwDl0cJnF