New Video: Sunflower Bean Shares Shimmering “There’s a Part I Can’t Get Back”

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, contemporary 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. 

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 a Friday release through Lucky Number. Three years have passed since the release of Headful of Sugar and in that time, 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 band with a deeply 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. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Champagne Taste” a song title that’s 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.

Mortal Primetime‘s latest single “There’s a Part I Can’t Get Back” is a Laurel Canyon-like tune that nods a bit at Twentytwo in Blue while featuring chiming guitars and one of Cumming’s most beautiful and earnest vocal turns in some time. But at its core is the simmering anger of being mistreated and denied innocence; of having an inability to trust; of knowing that you’ll live with the impacts of that treatment for the rest of your days.

The song, which is about personal experiences with being groomed finds Cumming being “as intentional and direct as possible,” as she grapples with what she’s experienced — and how it has shaped her and her life.

“This song is about the lasting scars of grooming—the parts of yourself that are stolen and the anger you carry because of it,” Cumming explains. “It came to me in such a raw and direct way, there was no second-guessing or wondering how I felt. I didn’t want to write a song about being healed, I wanted to be angry about needing to heal at all. The line, ‘If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord lets me get even first,’ is important because it captures the intensity of these feelings and how they go beyond logic. I am confronting the pain and the questions that will never be answered.”

Directed by Harv Frost, the accompanying video for “There’s a Part I Can’t Get Back” visually exploring Mortal Primetime‘s central themes while seeing the trio supporting one another as they fight to regain their footing in gorgeous, almost painterly settings.

The band will be embarking on a lengthy tour to support the new album. The tour includes two NYC area dates: April 25, 2025 at Rough Trade and May 22, 2025 at Warsaw. Check out the rest of the tour date below.

Tour dates

4/25 – New York, NY @ Rough Trade

4/30 – Kingston, UK @ Pryzm (Disco Room) 

5/1 – Leeds, UK @ Belgrave Music Hall 

5/2 – Liverpool, UK @ Baltic 

5/3 – London, UK @ Rough Trade East

5/4 – Brighton, UK @ Resident

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 @ Blue Room at 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 Laveda

# with Gift