New Video: Sunflower Bean Shares an Arena Rock Friendly Ripper

Formed back in 2013, while they were still teenagers, New York-based trio Sunflower Bean — Julia Cumming (vocals, bass) Nick Kivlen (guitar, vocals) and Olive Faber (drums) — are arguably one of the New York metropolitan area’s most acclaimed and commercially successful indie bands. Since their formation, the New York-based trio have released three critically acclaimed albums, 2016’s Human Ceremony, 2018’s Twentytwo in Blue and 2022’s Headful of Sugar, which featured several chart-topping singles.

The band has supported those albums with sold-out tour dates as headliners and as openers for the Beck, The Strokes, Cage the Elephant, Interpol, Courtney Barnett, The Pixies, The Kills, DIIV, Wolf Alice and more. They’ve also made the rounds of the international festival circuit with stops at Glastonbury, Governor’s Ball, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Reading Festival, Leeds Festival and others. And famously, they opened for Bernie Sanders during primary campaign rallies. 

Adding to a growing profile, the band’s Julia Cumming had a guest spot on Yves Tumor‘s 2020 effort Heaven to a Tortured Mind. Nick Kivlen and Olive Faber collaborated with Frost Children on “SERPENT,” which appears on 2023’s Speed Run. 

Late last year, the band returned with the Shake EP. The self-produced and self-recorded effort featured some of the band’s heaviest, most immediate and loudest material they’ve written and recorded to date. Influenced by the doom-laden, riff-driven sound of Black Sabbath and others, the EP is an embrace of rock tropes and excess, while nodding to the band’s first two albums. 

“SHAKE was inspired by our first years as a DIY band, the spirit that birthed us and gave us the chance to have this enduring journey together,” the band says of the EP. “We wrote, recorded, engineered, and produced these songs so nothing was filtered through anyone else’s idea of us. We always felt like rock and roll was a feeling, not a sound. But sometimes there is no subverting it or explaining it. We’re now offering it exactly as it occurred to us.” 

The JOVM mainstays highly-anticipated fourth album Mortal Primetime is slated for an April 25, 2025 through Lucky Number. In the three years since their last album Headful of Sugar, the members of the band drifted from one another as they pursued new projects and confronted personal challenges, tragedies and transformations. The album reportedly finds the members of the band with a renewed sense of purpose after nearly losing everything they’ve built together. “You get to decide what your prime is, and you fight for it,” the band’s Julia Cumming says. “This is ours, and that can’t be taken away by circumstance. We can’t take it away from each other. This moment, where we are now, is what we’ve always fought for.”

Mortal Primetime‘s material was inspired by alternative rock and psychedelia and rooted in arena-sized ambition, which results in a sound that’s not just undeniably theirs, but also sees the band celebrating their history while boldly pushing into the future.

Mortal Primetime‘s first single “Champagne Taste” is a nod to the band’s long-time alias when performing secret shows to test out new material, Anchored around scuzzy riffs, arena rock friendly, power chord-driven hooks and choruses paired with Cumming’s sultry, The Idiot-era Iggy Pop-styled croon, “Champagne Taste” sees the band simultaneously channeling a synthesis of 80s glam rock and 90s riot grrl alt rock and punk. But at its core, is a fierce, almost feral determination.

“This song came after a period that felt like rock bottom for the band. It is about feeling beaten down but still driving forward, to keep faith, to grow and to continue to create on our own terms, our Mortal Primetime,” the band explains.

The Issac Roberts-directed video for “Champagne Taste” is a slick, super stylized visual that recalls 90s MTV.

The JOVM mainstays will be embarking on a lengthy international tour that includes a May 22, 2025 stop at Warsaw. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.

Tour dates

2/13 – Glasgow, UK @ O2 Academy Glasgow ^

2/14 – Manchester, UK @ O2 Apollo ^

2/16 – Wolverhampton, UK @ Uni of Wolverhampton at The Civic Hall ^

2/17 – London, UK @ O2 Academy Brixton ^

2/18 – London, UK @ O2 Academy Brixton ^

2/20 – Cologne, DE @ Palladium ^

2/21 – Berlin, DE @ Columbiahalle ^

2/23 – Amsterdam, NL @ AFAS Live ^

2/24 – Brussels, BE @ Ancienne Belgique ^

2/26 – Paris, FR @ Zenith ^

2/27 – London, UK @ George Tavern

3/10 – 3/15 – Austin, TX @ SXSW

5/15 – Troy, NY @ No Fun

5/16 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brendas *

5/17 – Boston, MA @ Deep Cuts *

5/22 – Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw # 

5/23 – Washington, DC @ The Atlantis #

5/24 – Raleigh, NC @ Kings #

5/25 – Asheville, NC @ Eulogy #

5/27 – Nashville, TN @ Third Man Records #

5/28 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl #

5/30 – Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves #

5/31 – Austin, TX @ The Ballroom #

6/01 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Upstairs #

6/04 – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar #

6/05 – San Diego, CA @ The Casbah #

6/06 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room #

6/07 – San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel #

6/9 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios #

6/10 – Seattle, WA @ Madame Lou’s #

6/12 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court

6/13 – Fort Collins, CO @ The Coast #

6/14 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive

6/17 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry #

6/19 – Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village #

6/20 – Detroit, MI @ Third Man Records 

6/21 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison

^ with Cage The Elephant

* with Laveda

# with Gift