There’s something quietly alchemical about the way Watercolored crafts music, like watching ink bloom underwater. Behind the moniker is Itai Bauman, an artist whose genre-bending blend of singer-songwriter intimacy and cinematic production has been turning heads across Europe’s indie and experimental scenes. With Tears of the Sea, his ambitious concept album dropping April 29, 2025, Watercolored is no longer just a name, it’s a fully realized world.
At first listen, Tears of the Sea feels like it lives underwater. The album moves in swells and stillness, reflecting the unpredictable beauty of the ocean it’s inspired by. Bauman describes the project as a journey “through the oceans outside and within”—and that duality, the push and pull of inner turmoil and outer calm, reverberates throughout the album’s 11 tracks.
Sonically, the record wears its influences like subtle currents beneath the surface. You can hear echoes of Porcupine Tree’s moody grandeur, the lush textures of Mercury Rev, and the theatricality of The Divine Comedy. But Bauman isn’t imitating—he’s distilling. These inspirations swirl together to create something immersive and unclassifiable, where art rock meets ambient pop with a painter’s sense of space and detail.
On ‘A Dream’, a voice tells you, “You are in a small boat in the middle of the ocean. You are alone.” It’s stark, cinematic, and haunting. That’s the power of Tears of the Sea: it’s as much about what you feel between the notes as what’s being played. From the turbulent crescendos of ‘The Chase’ to the hushed dream-pop shimmer of ‘Waterflowers’, each track unfolds like a chapter in a storybook written in saltwater and starlight.
Bauman’s musical compass has always pointed beyond the expected. After studying at Israel’s Rimon Contemporary Music School, he continued shaping his voice at Catalyst Berlin, before anchoring at Thinkspace Education for a master’s in Composition for Media. That background seeps into the album’s cinematic quality—it’s not hard to imagine these songs underscoring a film that doesn’t exist yet, or a memory that feels just out of reach.
Perhaps most moving is how personal this project feels. ‘Ocean Stream’, inspired by quiet moments on a Berlin rooftop, captures the kind of late-night introspection that doesn’t need words. It floats, drifts, and leaves you weightless.
Tears of the Sea isn’t just something to listen to—it’s something to experience. Listen to the album now on all major streaming platforms.
