Los Angeles-based duo Sugar World — Ryan and Katryn Stanley — can trace its origins back to 2013: The duo started their careers in earnest a member of the Tallahassee-based bedroom pop outfit Naps. After Naps split up in 2016, Ryan and Katryn Stanley started releasing a series of singles and EP as Sugar World, which saw the pair crafting a sound that’s an idiosyncratic mix of lo-fi, twee pop and fuzzy electronica.
The duo released their Sugar World full-length debut, Lost & Found back in 2022. But since 2024, the Los Angeles-based duo have been increasingly exploring a more digital sound that draws from noise pop, hyper pop and underground internet hip-hop that features fuzzy, distorted guitar noise and blown out autotuned vocals.
Their sophomore album supercassettevision is slated for release later this year. The album, which will include the previously released “In Magazines,” will see the band further cement what they’ve dubbed a “new version of classic twee pop for the 2020s” that combines catchy melodies with harsher noisy elements.
supercassettevision’s second and latest single “Terra Incognita” derives its title from the Latin phrase “unknown land,” and sonically seems to channel a woozily lysergic synthesis of Mogwai and Evil Heat-era Primal Scream. The band explains that the song “was an experiment to see if we could bring our indie rock and jangle pop songwriting into a sonic environment inspired by electronic music and digicore. It’s fundamentally about making a bunch of money and then putting that money into car, and then driving the car off a cliff.”
Fittingly, the accompanying visual is comprised of fuzzy, VHS-style shot footage, treated in harsh color negatives. The result is a video that videos the lysergic buzz of the song.
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