Track Work: Ploy, ‘Friend Of A Friend’

What is it about agony that coaxes great pop songs out of Hyattsville two-piece Ploy?

On many of the electronic-pop duo’s singles, songwriter Gil Wojcik has sounded fed up, worn down, and wholly exhausted by love. Is misery his muse? “I’m not sure why most of my songs have a certain underlying sadness to them,” Wojcik writes in an email. “I guess I can connect to that feeling easily when I’m writing. I think a lot of people can connect to that feeling, which makes it a little uplifting to sing about.”

On its new song, “Friend of a Friend,” Ploy (made up of Wojcik and collaborator Justin Victoria) adds an actual guitar—a first for the synthpoppers—but doesn’t stray from its blue-hued emotional territory.

The song, Wojcik writes, is “about this struggle to get somewhere, or to become something more in a relationship and/or as an individual. It’s about the desires and needs we all have and the toll it takes on ourselves and the people we love or want to love. And trying to balance all this while carrying the weight of past experiences.”