Imagine you’re trapped inside a machine, looking for a way out. You feel a cold beat and tense rhythm, hear bleeps lurking in the background. It’s unsettling. Then, in the distance, a voice repeats the phrase you know from Dune. “Fear is the mind killer.” You see Timothée Chalamet or Kyle MacLachlan or some other Paul Atreides who lives in your head survive the box of pain. You feel relief. 

That’s what it’s like to hear “Fear (is the Mind Killer),” the Optometry song, for the first time. From Lemuria, the L.A.-based duo’s sophomore album, the song is an homage to Dune as much as it is a reflection on life in the 2020s.