NYIKO’s (nee-koh) new single, “Sugar,” released via Trailing Twelve, avoids familiar genre cues or emotional shortcuts. The track is taut and quietly unnerving. With Jynjo on the mix and Joe LaPorta mastering at Sterling Sound, it delivers synths that pulse with precision, guitars that slice through the mix, and bass that holds steady without drawing attention to itself.
The song dissects desire with almost clinical precision. What emerges is a kind of emotional automation: gestures of intimacy repeated without feeling, late-night calls answered without hesitation, and unspoken rules that govern a connection built more on pattern than presence. “‘Sugar’ is about temptation and control. It’s what happens when lust overrides logic—when something looks sweet on the surface but rots you from the inside,” NYIKO explains. It’s not cynical, but it is unsparing.
The emotional terrain is recognizable but left raw: desire without warmth, connection without depth. There’s no attempt to romanticize it. Instead, the singer, who wrote and produced the track entirely on his own, sketches out a relationship fueled by habit and impulse, where intimacy feels transactional rather than connective.
Directed by NYIKO and captured through the lens of Peter Donaghy, aka DONSLENS, the video mirrors the track’s subtle tension. Two people orbit each other in a delicate rhythm of desire and withdrawal, never fully converging, never entirely releasing. Edited by Erik Saevi and featuring Valentina Vixen, the visuals are stylized but not theatrical.
There’s also a quiet obsessiveness behind the scenes. NYIKO designed custom “Sugar” gum packs himself, basing them on the classic 5-stick packs that are now almost out of production. He created the mockup in Photoshop, printed it at FedEx, and then tracked down a nearly extinct format at a specialty candy store in LA. It is a detail that is not strictly necessary, yet its presence offers a window into NYIKO’s meticulous creative process.
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