Between the twinkling synth arpeggios and just-dissonant-enough melody of gobbinjr’s (pronounced like “goblin” without the L, plus “junior”) new track “firefly,” the sense of an impending arrival of something greater hangs heavy. As the first single off their new EP “vom night,” it works perfectly as an introduction and an invitation. gobbinjr is the dreamy “mean pop” project of NYU student Emma Witmer, and this EP will be the follow-up to this summer’s full-length release, “manalang.”

The track shows a heavier instrumental texture than was generally used on “manalang.” At least, the combination of the two synth lines makes it feel that way. The lyrics, however, continue along the melancholy and reflective path that Witmer already established. Her voice is so soft it’s almost just a breath, sweetly singing “I know your feelings and I make them rhyme.” The mood gets more and more desperate as the refrain comes back again and again — “I just want to be a firefly / I just want the human race to die.” As quoted from an interview on Stereogum, the song was written during a dark moment watching fireworks on the Fourth of July.

“You can see all the smoke in the sky and everything bad that we’re doing to the environment,” [Witmer] explains. “And we’re all just like, Oh, look at these pretty lights. And I had the thought: Everything we do is awful for the world. Humans are terrible. So I saw a firefly and thought, Why can’t I be just that? Why can’t I just not kill the world by living?”

“vom night” will be released on November 4 on JMC Aggregate. The EP is available for preorder on gobbinjr’s Bandcamp site.

Email Hailey Nuthals at [email protected].