4la7la Lets Emotion Bloom And Collapse On “Thief, Farewell!”
When you think about emotion, what’s truly staggering isn’t that it’s formed by 86 billion neurons firing across the brain, but how quickly those signals can rearrange themselves and completely alter a feeling. A single thought can sharpen it, distort it, deepen it, or erase it entirely. Emotion becomes something fragile and constantly shifting, bending like a blade of grass in the wind as internal and external forces reshape it in real time. One moment, a memory can feel warm and comforting; the next, it can ache with longing or collapse into grief. That volatility, that constant transformation, is part of what makes human feeling so terrifying and beautiful all at once, something vividly captured in the new video for “Thief, Farewell!” by Richmond musician 4la7la, winner of this year’s WNRN Tiny In-Studio Session Contest.
Off the bat, there is absolutely nothing “tiny” about this video. Everything surrounding “Thief, Farewell!” feels immense in both scale and emotion, from the eight-person ensemble assembled for the performance to the spacious recording room and the sweeping Blue Ridge Mountain vistas stretching beyond the cabin windows. Still, nothing looms larger than the towering majesty of the composition itself. At the center of it all sits Sophia Kadi, the songwriter, lyricist, and composer behind the 4la7la project, positioned humbly at the piano while orchestrating something that feels far larger than any one individual performance. Shot by Matt Cosner at Sill & Glade Cabin, the video captures every contributor with reverential warmth, allowing the ensemble itself to feel like a living extension of the song’s emotional complexity.
That collective includes Kyrie Beiler on violin, AJ Williams on viola, David Raposo on cello, Kaleel Moore on saxophone, Joseph Nichols on bass, Chris Hoffman on drums, and Taylor G on background vocals, each musician adding new texture and elevation to the composition’s constantly shifting terrain. Rather than functioning as simple accompaniment, the instrumentation moves like murmurations surrounding 4la7la’s voice, expanding and contracting around her words with remarkable sensitivity. In this way, the performance feels intimate and towering, grounded in delicate human vulnerability while reaching toward something almost orchestral in emotional scope.
And ambitious the song truly is. “Thief, Farewell!” unfolds like a piece of angular baroque-pop impressionism, gliding from section to section with the fluid unpredictability of a changing wind. Feelings transform into sensations, sensations into memories, all happening in real time as the composition bends and reshapes itself around key lyrical pivots. 4la7la’s transitions on words like “sorry” and “farewell” are especially breathtaking, not simply revealing the emotional core of the song, but puncturing it open further to let more spill outward: more intimacy, more longing, more transcendence.
There’s even a chessboard placed beside the piano within the frame, an image that feels impossible to separate from 4la7la’s songwriting itself. Much like a high-level chess match, “Thief, Farewell!” advances through unexpected movements and counterintuitive turns, revealing its deeper logic only after the emotional move has already been made. The track continues the labyrinthine compositional style hinted at earlier this year on “sun (xix),” while pushing even further beyond the pop acrobatics of “invisible hand” (2025) and the ambient wonder of “dream” (2024). With each release, 4la7la seems less interested in writing songs as fixed structures and more interested in creating emotional ecosystems, living pieces that continuously shift shape depending on where the listener stands inside them.
Watch the video for “Thief, Farewell!” below and for more, make sure to follow 4la7la on social media and bookmark her website.
