Magdalena Bay

Magdalena Bay is Mica Tenenbaum (vocals) and Matthew Lewin (production), high-school prog-rock bandmates from Miami who reinvented themselves as a synth-pop duo in 2016 and moved to Los Angeles in 2018. Their albums Mercurial World (2021) and Imaginal Disk (2024) won widespread critical acclaim, but the music is only half the project: the duo built a cult following on self-made, kitschy visuals steeped in early-2000s internet aesthetics, churned out across YouTube, TikTok and their own videos.

A computer’s interpretation of our dreams

In March 2022 they released the video for “Dreamcatching,” a Mercurial World cut, with visuals generated by AI neural networks — dreamscape worlds morphing endlessly into one another. The duo said the song is about “all the places you want to know and all the places you’ll never go,” and described the AI-built video as “a computer’s interpretation of our dreams.”

Imaginal Disk (2024) pushed the fascination deeper: a sci-fi concept album in which Tenenbaum plays a character who receives — and rejects — a mind-upgrade disk. Announcing the single “Tunnel Vision,” the duo framed the record’s thesis in a line worthy of a research-lab koan: that artificial intelligence won’t approximate humanity “until it learns how to hate itself.” Like Grimes and Holly Herndon, they treat AI less as a threat or gimmick than as raw aesthetic material for world-building.

Their adoption comes with clear eyes. In a November 2024 Clash interview, Lewin said he was “not scared” of AI but “more interested in it,” while doubting machines could ever replace the human experience of art; Tenenbaum conceded that “a computer can make things that sound good too,” but noted that “humans are drawn to humans.” It is curiosity without evangelism — use the tool where it serves the vision, and keep the humanity that makes people care.