Golem Dance Cult Give Pretty at Dawn a Guest Voice, a Cello and a Second Life on Video
A Franco-Australian Duo Turns a 2025 Album Track Into a Dark Wave Video
Golem Dance Cult are a band built around distance. Charles Why lives in Australia and Laur is based in France. The two friends started making music together as teenagers and reunited in 2021 under a new name. Pretty at Dawn is one of the songs that arrangement produced. Then, at the turn of the year, it gained a music video, published on 30 December 2025. The band dates the video to the first of January 2026, and it brings a song from their second album back into view.
Golem Dance Cult’s Pretty at Dawn is in the playlist below, and everything written about the duo so far sits on the Golem Dance Cult profile. The song reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Press play, then read on for the people who shaped it.
Pretty at Dawn Is Golem Dance Cult’s Song About Looking Past Appearances in a Relationship
The band describes the song in one image. A relationship is not always what it seems. Seeing it clearly means looking hard at yourself in a mirror, which is no easy task for a vampire. So the idea is part horror film, part confession. It also fits a band that has always borrowed from old monster movies. Their own description of the project is a Hammer horror picture directed by Salvador Dalí and recoloured by Andy Warhol.
That borrowed imagery is a constraint as much as a style. Golem Dance Cult work on a do-it-yourself ethic. They favour vibe over perfection, follow instinct and build on mistakes rather than editing them out. A song about seeing past the surface suits that method, because the band would rather keep a happy accident than polish it away.
A Video Made Close to Home by Milan Bruneau and Klaus Karloff
The video keeps the work close to home. Milan Bruneau created it and Klaus Karloff edited it. Karloff is no stranger to the band’s catalogue, either: he co-produced the album the song comes from and has made several of their earlier videos. Overall, the result is a three-minute film. It gives a song first heard on record a new way in for listeners who come to music through a screen.
A Guest Singer, a Cellist and Two Producers Shape Golem Dance Cult’s Pretty at Dawn
The credits show how far the duo reached for this one. Charles Why wrote the music, plays guitar and produced the track with Karloff. Meanwhile, the words are shared between Laur and Charles Why. Australian singer Inga Liljestrom takes the lead and backing vocals, and Jean-Philippe Feiss plays cello. Charles Why recorded the song at Black Obsidian Woodshed studio. Joe Carra then mastered it at Crystal Mastering in Melbourne; his credits include King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Amyl & The Sniffers.
The band calls its sound industrial dance rock: heavy guitars, a mechanical and ritual groove, and an electronic approach to layering. Here, a cello and a guest singer change the colour of that mix. As a result, the song sits in moody, shadowy dark wave rather than straight rock.
Dead Can Dance, The Cure and the Dark Wave Line Behind Golem Dance Cult
That combination has a history, and part of it is Australian. Dead Can Dance formed in Melbourne in 1981 and moved to London the following year. There Dead Can Dance signed to 4AD and folded medieval and Renaissance traditions into dark wave. Similarly, Golem Dance Cult come from the independent end of the same tradition. The instinct to set an old instrument inside a dark modern song runs in the same direction.
The video side has a famous precedent too. In 1989 The Cure released Lullaby, a song built around a nightmare image. Tim Pope’s video for it won British Video of the Year at the Brit Awards the following year. In short, a strong dark image can carry a song to new listeners. That is exactly the job the Pretty at Dawn video is doing for a track that has been out for over a year.
For listeners in Australia and beyond who follow dark wave and art rock, Pretty at Dawn is an easy place to start with this duo. First watch the video, then hear the song in its album setting.
BestRock.News’s curator team:
“Golem Dance Cult named themselves after the man-made creature of legend that protects the oppressed and ends up out of control. Pretty at Dawn has some of that in it: a song about looking past the surface, made by a duo happy to let things run a little wild.”
Hear Pretty at Dawn in its album setting on Bandcamp or the album on Apple Music. Follow Golem Dance Cult on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X.
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