Every once in a while, a record comes along that feels both timeless and unmoored, like something unearthed from another century but meant for this exact moment. People Just Float, the six-track cover EP from Breton folk-rock trio Steel & Velvet, is one of those rare releases. Issued on October 24, 2025, the project is not just an album but a cinematic meditation on solitude, salvation, and the fragile poetry of human connection.
Formed in 2021 by vocalist Johann Le Roux and guitarist Romuald Ballet-Baz, Steel & Velvet began as a meeting of kindred spirits—two classically trained musicians united by a shared fascination with minimalism and authenticity. Joined soon after by blues-rock guitarist Jean-Alain Larreur, the trio built a sound anchored in tradition yet alive with introspection. Their music strips away excess until all that remains is voice, guitar, and emotion—something raw, human, and hauntingly beautiful.
Following their 2023 EP Waiting for Some Warmth, a tribute to the late Mark Lanegan, Steel & Velvet return with People Just Float, a record that deepens their aesthetic while expanding their storytelling ambitions. Conceived as both a musical collection and a short film directed by Brest-based photographer and videographer Loïc Moyou, the EP unfolds like a dreamlike western—one steeped in silence, memory, and the ghosts of the past.
The narrative follows Joshua, a solitary man living in a remote cabin who encounters a frightened woman in the woods. What begins as a chance meeting evolves into a quiet exploration of redemption and human fragility. The six songs on People Just Float serve as the emotional soundtrack to this journey, each track tracing the inner landscape of its characters more than their outward story.
The EP opens with Orphan’s Lament, a reinterpretation of Robbie Basho’s deeply spiritual composition. Originally performed on piano, the song takes on new life through Romuald Ballet-Baz’s intricate guitar work, which replaces the instrument’s percussive resonance with gentle strings that shimmer like candlelight. Johann Le Roux’s voice enters like a prayer whispered into the wind—soft, aching, and alive with reverence. It’s a masterful transformation that honors Basho’s mysticism while situating it firmly in Steel & Velvet’s world of bare-boned sincerity.
Next comes Ring of Fire, Johnny Cash’s immortal anthem of devotion and danger. Rather than recreating the familiar swagger of the original, the band slows it down to a smoldering tempo. The horns are gone, replaced by the intimacy of wood and wire. The result feels less like a declaration and more like an admission—a man confessing to love’s consuming flame under the stars. Le Roux’s delivery is restrained yet magnetic, revealing the vulnerability at the heart of Cash’s classic.
On Man in the Long Black Coat, Steel & Velvet turn to Bob Dylan’s gothic storytelling, reimagining it as a slow-burning campfire ballad. The arrangement trades the swampy pulse of Dylan’s 1989 version for something more spectral. Guitars weave around Le Roux’s baritone in gentle dissonance, conjuring the image of a shadowed figure wandering through fog and regret. It’s a song about temptation, faith, and the eternal struggle between the two—territory that feels tailor-made for the band’s aesthetic.
The midpoint of the album, Silver, acts as a moment of emotional stillness. The track, originally by Pixies, is rendered with delicate restraint. Here, the group captures the quiet ache of nostalgia without sentimentality. Johann’s daughter, Jade Le Roux, lends her voice, adding an ethereal layer that hovers above the instrumentation like mist on a cold morning. Her inclusion gives the record an unexpected tenderness, hinting at generational continuity and the fragile inheritance of song.
If Silver is the album’s calm, Lake of Fire is its reckoning. The Nirvana version of the Meat Puppets classic was once snarling and furious; Steel & Velvet’s version feels weary, almost funereal. The guitars echo like footsteps on stone, and Le Roux’s vocals carry the haunted calm of a man staring into his own mortality. It’s a song that asks eternal questions—where do bad people go when they die?—but finds its power not in answers, only in the stillness that follows the asking.
The EP closes with In Heaven, originally written by Peter Ivers for David Lynch’s cult masterpiece Eraserhead. It’s a fitting finale, ethereal and unsettling in equal measure. The band stretches the song’s brief melody into something that feels suspended in time, a lullaby for lost souls. Jade’s voice returns here; she creates an ending that feels both celestial and grounded, a final reminder that love and loss often share the same space.
Throughout People Just Float, Steel & Velvet maintain their minimalist approach—two or three acoustic guitars, a voice unamplified, and silence as an active instrument. There’s no studio gloss, no digital perfection, only the resonance of wood, breath, and emotion. This stripped-back production not only reflects the band’s musical philosophy but also reinforces the themes of isolation and humanity that define both the EP and its companion film.
Visually, Loïc Moyou’s contribution cannot be understated. His short film brings the music to life through stark, dreamlike imagery that recalls Terrence Malick’s pastoral beauty and Sergio Leone’s mythic desolation. Every shot feels hand-stitched to the songs—light glinting off a rifle barrel, dust swirling in the sunlight, a face caught between fear and forgiveness. It’s less a literal interpretation of the music and more an extension of its mood, a cinematic echo of the record’s emotional gravity.
Steel & Velvet’s devotion to intimacy extends beyond the studio and screen. In their live performances, they often favor small venues where Johann Le Roux sings unamplified, connecting directly with audiences through unfiltered sound. It’s a rare kind of vulnerability in an age of amplification, and it’s that same vulnerability that gives People Just Float its quiet power.
In the end, People Just Float is not merely a collection of covers. It is a meditation on transience, on the thin line between flesh and spirit, on how songs—like people—can drift through time and still carry the weight of where they’ve been. By revisiting these classics through their own lens, Steel & Velvet remind us that great music doesn’t just belong to its era. It floats, endlessly, between the past and the present, between sorrow and grace, between steel and velvet.
