Marking the end of a three year silence, singer songwriter Caïman released the wonderful ‘Dreams Are A Way To See Dead People Again’ in June 2025. The low key track blended indie, pop and dream pop elements in a way that helped to bring out the best in a light, melodic vocal, making it easy to hear why some had dubbed the performer “the French Marika Hackman”. It was an absolutely fantastic return.

Three months later, ‘Grand 8’ found Caïman drifting even further into the realms of gentleness, with a track that coupled a dreamy French vocal with a very sedate groove, moving a little further towards traditional singer songwriter fare, without losing too much of the dream pop airiness that gave previous works a wonderful atmosphere.

On her current single, ‘sans tricher’ Caïman takes a massive leap into the realms of lo-fi folk. Recorded straight to cassette, the track makes a very natural sounding acoustic guitar the main focus. From the very beginning, the finger picked notes are shared with a pleasingly live feel; the buzz of the strings can be heard throughout, giving the listener the feel of actually being in the room, and the no frills recording also makes a great feature of light distortion on a couple of the louder vocal moments. The stripped down feel is timeless, but if obvious influences need to be sought, there are strong vibes of ‘Pink Moon’ era Nick Drake throughout – it’s almost impossible to hear this without immediately thinking of tracks like ‘Know’ and ‘Road’ – as well as a hint of early John Martyn colouring the performance. Despite having a vocal entirely in French, this should be a universal hit with lovers of lo-fi acoustic sounds, and in showing a very different side to the Caïman sound, it’s definitely very effective.

Take a listen below.