Get Hustling: Here’s Salt Cathedral’s “Run for the Money” Featuring Assassin

Here’s your Salt Cathedral crib sheet: they’re a duo made up of Juliana Ronderos and Nicolas Losada, but they’d respond to Juli and Nico if you hollered at them in the street. Nico comes from a jazz background and Juli has eyes wide enough to fall into and a way with melodies that’s ethereal and sexy as a silk chemise on sun-kissed skin. Interestingly, in places her vocal runs recall Lily Allen at her most delicate (listen to the pre-chorus on “LDN” for evidence), but largely their music blends synth-pop with some booty popping rhythms. We first caught the pair opening for Christine and the Queens a couple years ago, so y’know, they keep choice company. Thus far they’ve released a three EPs and a couple singles and premiering below is their latest song, lifted from their forthcoming album, Big Waves / Small Waves, out later this year. It is, they say, a splice of the Colombian roots and the sweet, sweet dancehall vibes that’ve seeped into their bones thanks to living in BK. Case in point they’ve roped in Kingston’s MC Assassin on this track below (a side note on this dude: he was on Kendrick’s “The Blacker the Berry”).

“‘Run For The Money’ is about the common experience of hard work, the work it takes to succeed, to be better—the hustle both to survive and to be personally satisfied,” the pair explain. “For this song, and the record, we were very inspired by our Colombian yearn for dancing as well as Caribbean culture and music—the latter of which is very vibrant in our Brooklyn neighborhood. We were really lucky to get Assassin, an insane talent and a very strong exponent of Jamaican and dancehall culture on this track.”

Listen below.