Sometimes the thing that saves you is the thing you walked away from years ago. For Tel Aviv-based songwriter Matan Hamish, that thing was music.
After spending years focused on medical school and establishing himself as a pediatrician, Hamish found himself in what he calls “the darkest of places.” The details don’t matter as much as what happened next. Instead of pushing through with willpower alone, he did something else entirely – he went back to the studio. Back to writing. Back to the part of himself he’d put on hold.
“Music helped me rise up,” he says simply about the decision to start creating again after his long hiatus. What emerged from those sessions wasn’t just therapy set to melody. It was a collection of professionally crafted songs that jump from country twang to dark house without warning, each one carrying the weight of someone who’s been through something real.
Take “Homeland,” warm guitars paired with the kind of vulnerable vocals that make you uncomfortable in the best way. It’s about searching for a place that feels like home when you’re completely lost. Then there’s “Oxygen,” just piano, ethereal pads, and a female vocalist telling the story of learning how to breathe again after loss. These aren’t metaphors chosen at random. They’re specific, lived-in, necessary.
The range is what catches you off guard. “Hallucinating” builds from electronic suspense into a dark house track about being gaslit until you can’t trust your own mind. “Tunnel Vision” goes full rock with drowning imagery that feels exhausting in exactly the right way. “Mono to Stereo” compares one-sided love to trying to create dimensional sound from flat audio – the kind of comparison only someone who spends hours in production would make.
Matan Hamish doesn’t sing on his own tracks. Instead, he directs different vocalists, matching each voice to what the song needs. It’s a choice that makes sense when you realize he’s less interested in being a star than in getting these songs exactly right. His cat Chvostek (really) often watches these sessions from somewhere in his Tel Aviv studio.
The musical foundation goes back to his teenage years with metal bands, using songwriting as an outlet for things he couldn’t say any other way. Now, genre boundaries mean nothing to him. “I write in whatever genre fits my current mood and the message the song is trying to convey,” he explains. Some days that’s country. Some days it’s EDM. The connecting thread isn’t style — it’s honesty.
Currently, he’s reworking tracks with other producers and actively searching for the right publisher or manager. He wants these songs in the hands of recording artists worldwide, people who can take them places his day job won’t allow him to go. For someone who returned to music as a lifeline, getting these songs heard feels less like ambition and more like completing something essential.
The tracks are ready. They’re polished, professional, and carry the kind of emotional truth that can’t be faked. Now it’s about finding the right people who hear what he hears in them – songs that arrived exactly when they needed to, born from a return that couldn’t wait any longer.
Connect with Matan Hamish on SoundCloud, explore his curated playlist at This Is Me, or follow his journey on Instagram. For professional inquiries: matanhamish2@gmail.com
