With the release of their debut album Coco Beware and their sophomore self-titled album, New York-based quintet Caveman — comprised of Matthew Iwanusa (vocals, guitar), James Carbonetti (guitar), Jeff Berrall (bass), Sam Hopkins (keys) and multi-instrumentalist Matthew Prescott-Clark — have developed a profile locally and nationally for a moody and gorgeous guitar and synth-based sound that at times owed a sonic debt to Peter Gabriel, U2 and others. And as a result the quintet has toured with the world, playing shows with the likes of The War On Drugs, Weezer and Jeff Tweedy, and they’ve received praise not just from this site, where they’ve become mainstays but from a number of major media outlets.

Now, it’s been some time since we’ve heard from them but the band’s long-anticipated third full-length effort Otero War is slated for release this summer. And the album’s first single “Never Going Back” is arguably the most upbeat and anthemic song the band has released to date, while sonically sounding as though it drew from early 80s Bruce Springsteen (in particular, think of “Dancing In The Dark“) but with Carbonetti’s gorgeous guitar work paired with soaring synths and Iwanusa’s plaintive vocals, while dealing with themes that Springsteen would have easily written about back then — figuring out the complications of love, desperately wanting to escape a humdrum and bland life, of recognizing that at a certain point, your decisions loom larger and larger over your life and more. It’s powerfully universal and speaks to things we’ve all felt and known at some point in our own lives.