Canadian progressive rock collective Versa proudly unveil a breathtaking new animated music video
for their 19-minute sci-fi epic Artemis, featuring guest performances from Michael Trew (Moon
Letters) and Sam Vallen (Caligula’s Horse). The track is taken from the band’s landmark anniversary release, A Voyage/A Destination – Special Round Trip Edition, which launched on March 6, 2026, as a digital release and deluxe double CD.
To dive a bit deeper into the release, HEAVY sent the band this Q & A.
HEAVY: At what point did the creative process start for your most recent release, and what were your initial ideas about how it should sound/be?
VERSA: A few songs on our most recent album date all the way back to 2010, including Flew the Coop and Prelude. We started work recording a follow-up to our 2010 album The Decline & Fall of… in 2013 but those sessions were aborted in 2014. During COVID, I pulled elements from those songs that I liked and set about re-arranging them for the Voyage/Destination albums, so 2021 was where the ideas about how these albums would sound really started to develop in earnest. The last song to be written was the last song on the album, Destination, which was written and recorded in 2024.
H: What was the journey like from that point, to the final/finished release? Can you tell us a bit more about the creative journey?
V: A long one! Many of the songs on the albums began being written around 2012 – we intended at that time to record a new studio album for a 2014 release, but those plans were aborted and the band went on an extended hiatus. During covid I dug out that material and started re-arranging it and writing some new songs as well. By 2022, we’d decided we had enough material for two albums, so we picked four songs we felt worked well together and prioritized finishing them, which became A Voyage/A Destination, and then took another two years to complete the remaining batch of songs, which became A Voyage/A Destination, Part 2.
H: How did you get to the release title, and what does it mean to you?
V: Several of the songs are about journeys or voyages of one kind of another, and it was a long voyage, from the genesis of the songs to the destination of the released album, so A Voyage/A Destination seemed appropriate.
H: What do you want your latest release to do for the representation of your band/project?
V: Just reach as many ears in the progressive rock, post rock, and art rock worlds as possible, possibly reach the ears of some festival organizers. We are not, and don’t intend to be, a touring band, so festivals are really the best opportunity for us to get out and perform some of this music to a wider audience.
H: Tough question time. What was the most rewarding moment when putting together your latest release, and why?
V: Our songs often have many different parts, with dozens or hundreds of tracks, and I record them one-at-a-time rather than doing live-off-the-floor recordings of the whole band, so it can sometimes take a long time to go from a demo to a completed, finished song, but the moment when most of the final tracks are in place, there’s a decent edit and rough mix and you can finally hear it coming together in the way that you’ve been imagining it will for months or years, that’s always very satisfying.
H: Finally, what else can we expect to see from you, as we head into 2026?
V: It’s the 20th anniversary of the band and we have some big things planned – we just released the special edition version of our Voyage/Destination albums, as well as the most ambitious music video we’ve ever done, for our song Artemis. We’ll be releasing a short live music video for Bury Me at Sea, and then a full-length covers album in June. We’re playing and recording a 20th anniversary concert in June as well, and performing one or two other one-off shows over the Spring and Summer. Once the covers album and 20th anniversary shows are finished we’ll begin working on our fifth LP of original material, with an eye to releasing that album in 2027.
