[Cover photo credit to Sami Weller]

British Indie Pop artist Daniel Pickard has announced “Nominee” the latest from his forthcoming debut album, Behaviour, arriving independently on October 23, 2026, via AWAL. Drawing upon the record’s themes of “made-up stories, astute observations, and exacting slights in the makeup of polite British society”, the single takes on the “decadence, pleasure, and power as a young man comes of age.”

Pickard says about the single:

‘Nominee’ is a young man’s awakening to a world of excess and the struggle of power dynamics. The subject is consumed with pleasure yet not at all confident in neither the protagonist’s nor his own use of it. The impetus is to feel something that he hasn’t previously by a disregard of consequence. The protagonist is the nominated tour guide.

The “Nominee” visualizer, directed by Ben Poulton, is a headless, retro karaoke lyric video that holds the mystery and not-so-concealed darkness of a Magritte-style symbolist painting.

Pickard comments:

There is the notion of Carl Jung’s shadow self here. I like to call it the anti-me — played by Ben in the video — who assumes control. The subconscious devil isn’t fully disguised from either its victim or audience; my subconscious mind is making fun of me but is not as completely in disguise as it thinks. This is represented in the clip where the green-screen is not fully perfected.

On Behaviour, there’s a “dichotomy between cynicism and romance”, and a “take it or leave it” confrontation that runs through the album.