New Video: Sweeping Promises Share Forcefully Urgent “Cocoon”

Lawrence, KS-based duo Sweeping Promises — Lira Mondal (vocals, bass, production) and Caufield Schnug (guitar, drums, production) — can trace their origins to a chance meeting in Arkansas, which led to a decade of playing together in an eclectic assortment of projects. Meticiuluosly controlling every aspect of their craft, from the frist note they write together, through production and engineering, using space as a key element of their sound, to mastering, each song is a testament to their long-held dynamic chemistry as musicians and artists.

Their full-length debut, 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out was released through Feel It Records. Written before the pandemic, the album’s material managed to pair the anxious urgency of a commanding live performance with a gauzy production, creating a distorted sense of time. That resonated with tons of folks during quarantine, who turned the album into a life-saving flotation device — and fittingly the album received rapturous praise from Stereogum, Pitchfork, and NPR. Around then, Feel It Records and Sub Pop agreed to join forces to distribute the duo’s work across North America and globally, starting with 2021’s “Pain Without a Touch.”

2023’s sophmore self-produced album Good Living Is Coming For You was released across North America through Feel It Records and globally through Sub Pop. Produced and recorded in the duo’s Lawrence-based home studio, Good Livng Is Coming For You was a decided cahnge in direction and appraoch: They eschewed the brutalist ambienace of their former Boston subterranean, concrete laboratory and the single mic recording technique of its immediate predecessor. Recorded in a nude painting studio bathed in light with high-ceilings, their Kansas studio is a reverb-rich space, that helps influence the album’s overall sound. Thematically, the album’s material touched upon power struggles, accepting aging, breaking restraints and more, delivered with a fervent urgency. 

The band’s third album, You Say I Romanticize is slated for an August 14, 2026 release globally through Sub Pop. Recorded over an 18-month period, You Say I Romanticize is a tribute to the chaos of creation and collaboration under shifting circmstances. Mondal and Schung found and tested themselves in their combination tour house and recording studio annually working on dozens of albums by other bands, hosting tour stops, planning shows and the like. After an immerseive process of traking adn whittling down YSIR demos and carving out an idiosyncratic chamber recording member for the album’s deliberate and international wall-of-sound appraoch, the duo brought in touring drummer Spenser Gralla to play the album’s matreial as the band would on stage.

The album’s frenzied and passionate sound shines most in Modal’s vocal perforamnce. Where you might have heard a growl here and there on certain previously releserd Sweeping Promises trcks, the band’s frontwoman shouts, roars, hits tricky notes all over teh place and shreds her thraot throhgout the album’s run time.

You Say I Romanticize takes the art-by-any-means-necessary ethos that Mondal and Schung have firmly established throhgout their careers and turns the prompt upside down, landing on a perosnality epidemic that manifests across the album’s ten songs.

The album’s second single “Coccon” is a forcefully urgent and angular post-punk ripper, anchored around some of the most impassioned and musuclar recorded performances I’ve yet to personally heard from the band — especially from Mondal, who showcases a punchy attack for the song’s verses and a forceful growl for the song’s choruses and hooks.

“We wrote ‘Cocoon’ years ago to extend our live set back when we only knew the ten songs from our first album,” the band says. “

It has become a staple of our live set over the years and has undergone several metamorphoses in our home studio, as we wanted to develop this track in a disarming and dead-simple way for the ‘live sound’ mentality of YSIR. The music video intercuts homegrown live footage of the band playing shows in the Kansas community with the sculptural and psychogeographic idea of the cocoon, which entices and finally envelops our singer, Lira Mondal.”

The band will be embarking on a lengthy North American headlining tour that includes two New York area dates — November 10, 2026 at Night Club 101 and November 11, 2026 at Baby’s All Right. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.

SWEEPING PROMISES YOU SAY I ROMANTICIZE 
NORTH AMERICAN HEADLINE TOUR
Wed. Sep. 09 – Oklahoma City, OK – Resonant Head
Thu. Sep. 10 – Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves
Fri. Sep. 11 – Austin, TX – LEVITATION
Sat. Sep. 12 – San Antonio, TX – Paper Tiger
Tue. Sep. 15 – Phoenix, AZ – Rebel Lounge
Wed. Sep. 16 – San Diego, CA – Casbah
Thu. Sep. 17 – Los Angeles, CA – Sid the Cat Auditorium
Fri. Sep. 18 – San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop
Sun. Sep. 20 – Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios
Tue. Sep. 22 – Vancouver, BC – Fox Cabaret
Wed. Sep. 23 – Seattle, WA – Baba Yaga
Fri. Sep. 25 – Boise, ID – Shrine Social Club Basement
Sat. Sep. 26 – Salt Lake City, UT – The DLC at Quarters
Sun. Sep. 27 – Denver, CO – Hi-Dive
Tue. Sep. 29 – Lawrence, KS – White Schoolhouse (NEWLY ANNOUNCED SHOW)
 
Tue. Oct. 27 – Omaha, NE – Slowdown
Wed. Oct. 28 – St Paul, MN – Turf Club
Thu. Oct 29 –  Milwaukee, WI – Cactus Club
Fri. Oct. 30 – Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle
Sat. Oct. 31 – Detroit, MI – Lager House
Tue. Nov. 03 – Toronto, ON – Monarch
Wed. Nov. 04 – Montreal, QC – La Sala Rossa
Thu. Nov. 05 – Boston, MA – Deep Cuts
Fri. Nov. 06 – Boston, MA – Deep Cuts
Sun. Nov. 08 – Troy, NY – No Fun
Tue. Nov. 10 – New York, NY – Night Club 101
Wed. Nov. 11 – Brooklyn, NY – Baby’s All Right
Thu. Nov. 12 – Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church
Fri. Nov. 13 – Washington, DC – Union Stage
Sat. Nov. 14 – Richmond, VA – Cobra Cabana
Mon. Nov. 16 – Durham, NC – The Pinhook
Tue. Nov. 17 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade – Purgatory
Wed. Nov. 18 – Nashville, TN – DRKMTTR

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