Los Angeles-based outfit Dummy — Alex Ewell, Emma Maatman, Nathan O’Dell, Joe Trainor and Lance Umble — will be releasing their fourth studio album, do you love the color of the sky on October 16, 2026 through Polyvinyl. If 2024’s Free Energy and its subsequent remix album evoked the spirit of Manchester and the optimism of the rave, Dummy’s fourth album is reportedly rooted in a lyrical skepticism inspired by post-rock and drone of Seefeel, Windy & Carl and Disco Inferno while playfully adorned in the jubilant pop hues of early Björk, The Sundays and Ray of Light-era Madonna. The album is essentially an anti-zeitgeist effort, freezing the listening into their incorporeal moment of time, freed from the rat race and trends, embracing insularity to the point that it somehow becomes the future.
And yet despite the allusions to futurism, the Los Angeles-based outfit are a band in the classic sense, grounded in work ethic and commitment to the music. As Joe Trainor says of their time since the release of Free Energy, “We toured a lot, around 150 days, and played approximately 113 shows” which included several tours of the US and two of Europe, “. . . and on larger stages than ever before.” Alex Ewell adds “Touring has had huge impact on us and our music.”
“Making music shouldn’t be fun,” the band jokingly asserts. But it also comes from earnestness and a love for the game so deep that they don’t want to cheat it. The blood, sweat and tears of “putting in the work” is at the heart of do you love the color of the sky? — a byproduct of shedding skins through live performance. Sonically, the album is a bold, creative and downright effortless leap forward for the Los Angeles-based quartet that finds them at their most creatively in-tune.
Thematically, the album may arguably be their most politically trenchant and yet simultaneously, their most inviting. Breakbeats and keyboardist Emma Maatman’s vocals belie a mischievous and purposeful sleight of hand — the listener may become entranced by the band’s hypnotic grooves, but they’ve also subconsciously accrued a vision of a new, radical politic, informed by our increasingly dystopian hellscape.
do you love the color of the sky?‘s first single “Full Spectrum Dominance” is a trippy and hook-driven Madchester-meets-Evil Heat-era Primal Scream-like tune built around a mind-bending, dance floor-adjacent groove and dusty breakbeats beneath Maatman’s beguiling vocal. Thematically, the song comments on AI and the increasing devaluation of art. Joe Trainor says “I was trying to make something just heavier, and we joked it was our nu mental song. During the recording, we added the tambourine that gives it a more dancey vibe, Deee-Lite meets Deftones.”
Emma Maatman adds, “This is the Technofeudalism bop. Tech billionaires are treating AI like the new Alchemy, using it as a source of power and magic. This supposedly soon-to-be all-powerful technology could not exist without harvesting all of humanity’s intellectual property and collective work. ‘Prima Materia’ is the building block of all alchemical matter, so in the canon of the song, we humans are the Prima Materia.”
Directed and animated by Matt Wells, the accompanying video is a montage of 3D animation, found imagery and motion graphics exploring AI as a modern form of alchemy. Wells drew on the fears and frustrations surrounding the rise of AI and its hostile attempt to erode and replace the human experience. Visually, the video is inspired by early CGI demonstrations, cyberpunk films and late 1990s UK music videos.
Dummy will be embarking on a tour to support the new album. Tour dates are below, y’all.
Tour Dates:
Tue. Oct. 13 – Fresno, CA @ Tower Lounge *
Wed. Oct. 14 – San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel *
Thu. Oct. 15 – Sacramento, CA @ Café Colonial *
Fri. Oct. 16 – Reno, NV @ Holland Project *
Sat. Oct. 17 – Arcata, CA @ Miniplex w/ Dilies
Tue. Oct. 20 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios *
Thu. Oct. 22 – Vancouver, BC @ The Wise *
Fri. Oct. 23 – Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern *
Sat. Oct. 24 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux *
Mon. Oct. 26 – Salt Lake City, UT @ International Bar *
Tue. Oct. 27 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive *
Wed. Nov. 4 – Los Angeles, CA @ Sid The Cat Ballroom
* = w/ Golomb
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