Michellar – A Game of Love with Rad Datsun and One Big Breath

The Game of Love and the Sweet Chaos Behind It

There’s a moment in every song that reveals its core. With Michellar and Rad Datsun’s Game of Love, it hits the second their voices meet on that shared line – “It’s the game of love…” – coming with the ease of two people who’ve been orbiting the same truth for a long time. I sat with that on repeat, coffee cooling next to me, the window showing another grey UK morning. And the track kept warming up the room in small, steady waves.

Michellar – Michelle Bond, if you meet her in the real world – brings that subtle warmth that only happens when someone lives inside both music and visual art. She’s based in San Francisco, juggling paintings, songwriting, open mics, and a personal style. Her collaborator here, Rad Datsun (Brad Johnson), walked into her story during a songwriting retreat up in the San Bernardino mountains. A random meeting, a shared spark, and suddenly they were writing about love the way people actually live it – fun, messy, and looping in circles.

And yes, Fleetwood Mac was floating somewhere in the ether while they worked the melody out, which explains the warm edge in the harmonies.

A Song Born in Three Cities and One Big Breath

The story behind Game of Love came from that retreat – both of them surrounded by mountain air and people trying to shake the dust off their creativity. They chose a looping backtrack, something steady enough to hold a small story, and then built a little world inside it. A world where people dance with each other’s feelings, sometimes with grace, sometimes with honesty. They shaped the lyrics, laughed through the process, and left the retreat with the bones of something real.

The demos travelled from San Francisco to Minneapolis, each carrying a different kind of weather. Then everything crossed the ocean to Romania, where producer Marius Alexandru blend it all together into a smooth, balanced production.

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The Voices, the Feel, the Loop

What hit me first was how well the two voices intersect. Warm tone meeting candid tone, both leaning into the same truth. Two people letting the line roll naturally between them. There’s a softness in the delivery, the kind that comes from people who actually enjoy writing together. You can hear the fun they had shaping the story. That’s rare. That matters.

— Read more about Michellar on Groover City —

Underneath, the looping pattern does its job. It holds the song like a spine. And every time that refrain returns, it lands with that quiet nudge: some games feel good to play, even when you know the rules keep changing.

The Artwork — Old-Soul Love in a Modern Sky

The cover art. Two people meet at what looks like an airport – a crossroads, a threshold, a place where stories start or split. The planes carve heart-shaped trails into the sky, as a wink. There’s a retro tone in the colours, that washed-paper look you find in old romance posters.

And yet the scene feels modern in its honesty: two people still figuring each other out, still brave enough to stand close. The more I looked at it, the more it matched the song.

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The Heart of This Release

Game of Love marks something important for Michellar: her first California collaboration, her first step into a wider space. She creates to connect – through abstract imagery, through lyrics that feel lived, through melodies that walk rather than run. I’ll leave you with what stayed with me after the fifth replay: two voices meeting in a single line, repeating it like a truth they’re both learning as they go.

Meet Michellar on her Facebook, Instagram, Bandcamp, YouTube and Spotify – and take the song with you into your day.

— Dive into the Groover City POP playlist below —