Photo by Kenny Beiber
New Jersey heavy rock artist Rhonette Smith will release her newest single, "Loss," on October 30, 2025 to coincide with Día de los Muertos, in honor of her Mexican heritage. Though she only began celebrating the holiday as an adult, the track is a powerful anthem that explores her personal relationship with grief. The song is available for pre-save now.
“Loss” was originally written in 2023 as an exploration of grief. After the passing of her grandmother in 2024, Rhonette revisited the track to include even more honesty. “Over the past ten years or so, I’ve been to a lot of funerals. I noticed that the older I get, the more frequently they seem to come. I started to see how grief can really come out of nowhere and I wanted to talk about that.”
Recorded in Oak Ridge, NJ, “Loss” is Rhonette’s latest collaboration with producer Steve Kellner (Reality Suite, These Wolves) from The Burn Room. Kellner helped to build out the song into a tune ready to fill an arena. While recording, Rhonette even recalled how it was just hearing the initial mix. "I was overwhelmed by all the feelings at once: sadness over things I’ve lost, but also excitement and hope to finally be realizing a dream I’ve had for 20 years.”
Rhonette Smith is an artist that bares her whole soul by exploring the dark sides of depression, anxiety, shame, guilt, and fear in her music. She has been exploring these themes through songwriting since her early teen years. In 2013, she fronted the indie rock band Centennials for seven years, releasing two EPs and a full-length record while playing across the New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania bar and basement scenes.
In pursuit of a more personalized sound, Rhonette launched her solo career with the 2019 full-length album Phantasmic. After a creative hiatus, she has returned to making music this time striving for a darker, heavier sound, with metal undertones. This direction proved successful with the 2025 single "Bent," which became the artist's highest-streamed track to date after reaching a large audience on TikTok and YouTube.
