Dark Downtempo Rooted In Shared Folklore
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HoneyBones give the Baba Yaga archetype a dark, downtempo setting on The Call of Baba Yaga
. The second single from Melinda Joy and Juro Kosec brings richly layered electronica into contact with rock, drawing on their shared Eastern European heritage and the wild landscapes of Iceland. Those starting points give the project a particular sense of place: inherited folklore meets the environment surrounding Kosec’s life and work. The single was released on October 23, 2026.
HoneyBones is concerned with consciousness, spirituality and the connections between musical and visual expression. Baba Yaga gives those interests a focal point. The mythic figure offers a way into shared roots, while the combination of electronica and rock brings the musicians’ different backgrounds into the same frame. The project’s name captures that interest in contrasting sensations: in their words, “the sound and feel of honey and bone”.
Melinda Joy brings a songwriter’s concern for words and bass-led melody to HoneyBones. Her own songs interweave poetic lyrics with bass and melody lines. Based in Austin and Mexico, Joy also works as an author and filmmaker. Her soulful, jazzy sound has been described as “Southern Gothic”; her full-length records include Beautiful Illusions (2020) and Unbound (2004), the latter recorded with her debut band, M.J. Baby & The Last Word. Kosec works across music, film, photography and digital art. Originally from Slovakia, he spent years in the Czech Republic before settling in Iceland. His interest in analogue warmth and electronic pulse adds another creative perspective to the partnership, along with the experience of an artist who moves regularly between sound and image.
Their creative lives have crossed before. Kosec filmed and edited the music video for Joy’s Out of the Blue
, a duet with Son of Cormack. That shared experience gives context to HoneyBones’ combination of musical and visual work. The Call of Baba Yaga
also has an official lyric video credited to Joy and Kosec. The imagery belongs to the same collaboration as the recording, with the duo shaping how the song is heard and seen.
The project’s range grows from those different practices. Joy brings poetic writing and bass-led melody to a partnership with an artist attentive to electronic pulse, analogue warmth and visual storytelling. The Call of Baba Yaga
gives those approaches a shared subject. It is an old figure carried into the present through two working musicians’ imaginations, with folklore becoming material they can shape together.
Photo by Melinda Joy & Juro Kosec.
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