Northern outsider-pop project Dilettante, led by Leeds-born multi-instrumentalist and award-winning composer Francesca Pidgeon, has just shared her newest single, ‘Honey’, out now via Launchpad+ / EMI North.

‘Honey’ is a lively, tongue-in-cheek exploration of frustration and self-acceptance. Inspired by Pidgeon’s transformative solo trip to Toronto for NXNE, the song captures the liberating yet challenging emotions of travel and personal discovery. “I was running around this town feeling alive again, meeting new people, and I felt great,” Francesca recalls. “Then, I called home, and one conversation just soured everything for me. It’s about the frustration of people wanting me to be someone I’m not.”

With a chorus that embodies a playful sass — “Aww, Honey!” — Francesca channels her experiences with societal expectations and unwanted advances. “It’s about people wanting me to change, or coming onto me awkwardly, and me just feeling sorry for them instead of angry,” she adds. Originally inspired by the country and folk singers Francesca encountered in Canada, “Honey” began as a stripped-back, guitar-driven tune before evolving into a production that retains her signature experimentation.

Accompanying the single is a new music video, created fromfootage captured on an Insta360 camera mounted to Francesca’s bike handlebars. “The video was the result of me attaching a borrowed Insta360 camera to my bike handlebars every day for a few weeks and capturing every journey I made on it,” she explains. “There’s something super freeing about cycling in a new city, and I felt like maybe I could get that feeling across even in my old city, doing the same route I do every day pretty much. That said, it’s also about the grind of heading into the studio space every day to do the same thing, and the pull of home and familiarity.”