Kali Uchis is waiting to collaborate with Ariana Grande, but she isn’t waiting to roll out new music. Earlier this month, Uchis tweeted, “My third album & the next are both finished, one is an English album one is a Spanish album.” She confirmed both will drop in 2023 but left the order up to her fans. It would appear that the fans chose to hear Uchis’ English album first because Uchis dropped “I Wish You Roses” today, January 19.
“This song is about being able to release people with love,” Uchis said in a statement, per a press release. “It could be a friend, a lover, or someone else, but the point is to celebrate releasing people from your life without being resentful or bitter.”
Uchis has been teasing the sensual, hypnotic single all week, including snapshots from the Cho Gi-Seok-directed video that earned comments from boyfriend Don Toliver, Omar Apollo, and Snoh Aalegra.
The colorful video leaves little to the imagination. Uchis appears shirtless — her skin tastefully painted — as she sings, “When I’m here, I’m someone to honor / When I’m gone, I’m someone to mourn.” Elsewhere, she’s laying in a field of roses and aptly singing, “Never thought I would be without you / I wish you love, I wish you well / I wish you roses while you can still smell ’em.”
As Uchis told Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe, “I Wish You Roses” marks Cho Gi-Seok’s first-ever music video.
“He basically already has this concept that he does flower studies and the flower studies felt so perfect for the song. Obviously the song, how much he wrote, I got it so locked into my mind,” Uchis told Lowe. “I need to work with this person to do flower studies for this music video. So I had told him, he was immediately like, ‘Yes, let’s make it work.’ And I went straight to Korea. So, it ended up being a really intense video shoot — like 24 hours, we were on set.”
Will Uchis add this to her upcoming Coachella set list?
Watch the “I Wish You Roses” video above.