FLOOD Magazine premieres Otracami's video single "Sirens"

Otracami Contemplates the Employer-Employee Relationship of Persephone and the Sirens on New Single

Words: Mike LeSuer

Photo: Bella Week

February 05, 2026

“Camila Ortiz announced her sophomore album as Otracami with the single ‘Please,’ a track that speaks to the Brooklyn-based songwriter’s ability to subvert expectations within the ever-expanding realm of soft indie-folk, and sets the scene for Runoff being a highly personal collection of songs. Well, with one notable exception: her dreamy ballad about mermaids, which came together at the behest of a visual artist at Art Basel who prompted Ortiz to pen something about the mythical aquatic creatures. ‘Obviously I feel like whenever you write a song like that it ends up reflecting whatever’s happening for you, still,’ she notes.

“Titled ‘Sirens,’ the track is both literally about the tragic figures from Greek mythology and a subtle testament to Otracami’s transfixing compositions. ‘The narrative of this song is from the story of Persephone and the group origin of sirens, which is that they were Persephone’s handmaidens—they were just girls who worked for her,’ she explains. ‘When Persephone got kidnapped by Hades and taken into the underworld, Persephone’s mom got so angry that she turned Persephone’s handmaidens into sirens, like into monsters, and made them fly around for the rest of eternity—basically just because this bad thing happened and they were around.’ Summing up the personal facet of the soft-rock cut within the context of an album about leaving jobs and relationships behind, she adds: ‘The song is about how much you owe somebody that you work for—what are the boundaries of that when something bad happens? How much are you responsible for, and does it matter?’

Read the full review at floodmagazine.com.