Daneshevskaya

Daneshevskaya — the New York art-folk project of Anna Beckerman — presents her new single/video “Scrooge,” the first taste of new music since the release of her “eclectic and spellbinding” (Paste) breakout Long Is The Tunnel in 2023. It led to Daneshevskaya being named an “Artist You Need to Know” by Rolling Stone, an “Artist to Watch” by Stereogum, and was named a “Best Debut Album of 2023” by Paste.

A reimagined form of a fan-favorite demo, “Scrooge” is a swirling look at estrangement in a relationship, painted with Daneshevskaya’s signature dark romanticism. The lush, thickly textured track was mixed by engineer Marcus Paquin (The Weather Station, The National, Julia Jacklin) and reinvigorated with newly added arrangements of strings, guitars and hushed double vocals. 

“This song is about making someone a villain so that you can accept that they don’t want to be in your life anymore,” Beckerman explains. “Becoming detached from someone in that way to the point where you can see them like other people see them is empowering, but also really sad. Even though it was written a few years ago, it keeps being relevant in my life.”

Directed by bandmate Maddy Leshner, the “Scrooge” music video follows Daneshevskaya moving alone through an amusement park. It’s a fittingly sad, yet beautiful accompaniment to the track.

Led by Beckerman and joined by collaborators Artur Szerejko and Maddy Leshner, Daneshevskaya’s songs are steeped in the folklore of Beckerman’s own personal history. She grew up in a musical family; her father is a music professor, her mother studied opera, and she and her brothers played various instruments in the house. Beckerman has lived in New York City all her life, but her artist (and real middle) name comes from her Russian-Jewish great-grandmother, a person whose presence she has always felt although their paths never crossed in real life. By day, Beckerman is a social worker for preschool kids in Brooklyn, by night, she crafts whimsical, oft-elegiac songs with help from Szerejko and Leshner, who lend their musical and visual art talents to the project. “The fun part of music is connecting with people, that’s how I was raised,” she says.