Fronted by Rose Brown, the Lawrence, KS-based indie trio Flooding formed back in 2021. That same year, the trio released self-titled full-length debut, which featured fan favorites “Insure Me, Procure Me” and “Delayed Gratification” and an attention grabbing sound that ranged from whispers and airy guitar riffs to intense lyricism and distorted blasts of noise.
The Kansas trio’s sophomore album, 2023’s Silhouette Machine received praise from Rolling Stone, Treble Zine, New Noise Magazine and others for a heavy soothing and otherworldly sound that brought in pummeling drums and guitars, just when the listener was getting comfortable.
Flooding kicked off the year, opening for Los Angeles-based outfit Cryogeyser‘s national tour. And building upon that momentum, the trio will be releasing the object 1 EP on July 11, 2025. The EP, which will feature the previously released “your silence is my favorite song” reportedly sees the Lawrence-based trio infusing pop-leaning songwriting into their sound, trading spoken word for melodies and thinking like pop stars when cultivating the energy of their live show.
The EP’s latest single “depictions of the female body” is a bruising and grungy bit of 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock that delves into the hope and desperation of unreciprocated desire, capturing the woozy and bitter ache of heartsickness in a deeply lived-in fashion.
“Sexual fantasies are a form of hope,” Flooding’s Rose Brown explains. “If you’re ever horribly depressed, you should try having a crush on someone.”
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. Their relentless practice has made perfect: Meticulously controlling every aspect of their craft, from the first note they write together, through production and engineering, using space as a key element of their sound, to the final mastering process, each song is an unspoiled fingerprint unique to their long-held dynamic chemistry.
The duo’s 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.”
Slated for a Friday release through Feel It Records across North America and Sub Pop globally, the duo’s highly-anticipated sophomore album, Good Living Is Coming For You was recorded and produced by Mondal and Schung in their Lawrence, KS-based home studio. In some way, the album’s title and its material is informed by more than a half-century of underground music revolutionaries, who have taken whacks at the mundane mainstream. English punks spat “NO FUTURE” at germ-free adolescents. Ohio New Wavers devolutionized mankind with whips. Athens art school students chomped at hero worship. MetroCard carrying riot grrls rebirthed the bomp with a gasoline gut. The duo read pandemic minds with 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out. With their forthcoming sophomore album, the return with a new message that initially offers hope wrapped around relief. But maybe it’s warning. Or darker still, a threat.
While the duo have amassed acclaim for unfussy, monolithic anthems, Good Living Is Coming For You is a decided change in sonic direction and approach: They’ve eschewed the brutalist ambience of their 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 Lawrence-based studio is a reverb-rich space, that helps influence the album’s overall sound. Thematically, the album’s material touches upon power struggles, accepting aging, breaking restraints and more, delivered with a fervent urgency.
In the lead-up to the album’s release I’ve managed to write about two of its singles:
Album opener “Eraser,” a gritty and furious ripper built around enormous shout-along worthy hooks and choruses, thunderous drumming, angular and propulsive bass lines, and distortion pedaled guitars paired with Mondal’s powerhouse delivery and copious amounts of reverb. While sonically recalling riot grrrl punk, complete with righteous and urgent fury, “Eraser,” as the duo explain is “a malevolent creep – an overly ambitious, shadowy force who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. She watches your every move, mirrors your motions, and ultimately uses your voice against you without you ever noticing what she’s done. She’s unchecked ambition, a paranoid girl Friday, an overriding impulse to reflect rather than project. She must be stopped at all costs.”
“You Shatter,” a synth punk ripper that sounds like a synthesis of Freedom of Choice-era DEVO, Memphis synth punks Nots and the Go-Go’s. “‘You Shatter’ is our ode to being a hammer,” the duo say of the song.
The soon-to-be released album’s third and latest single, album title track “Good Living Is Coming for You” is a brooding and uneasy track built around a metronomic-like groove, wiry guitar blasts paired with Mondal’s forceful croon. The result is a song that manages to sound a bit like Wire — but while evoking an encroaching sense of doom. The end is very much nigh, folks.
Directed by experimental filmmaker Jessica Bardsley, the accompanying video for “Good Living Is Coming for You” draws from 70s and 80s horror films. “For this video, we collaborated with one of our closest friends, experimental filmmaker Jessica Bardsley (Life Without Dreams, Goodbye Thelma),” the members of Sweeping Promises explain in press notes. Drawing from the glamorous and bloodthirsty aesthetic of ‘70s and ‘80s horror films (Daughters of Darkness, The Hunger, The Lair of the White Worm, Dream Demon), the visual companion to ‘Good Living Is Coming for You’ channels the song’s unshakable feeling of discontent and encroaching domestic doom through the confines of a DIY horror flick as seen by some nameless sleepless soul on late-night cable, the line between movie and infomercial blurred to infernal effect.”
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. Their relentless practice has made perfect: Meticulously controlling every aspect of their craft, from the first note they write together, through production and engineering, using space as a key element of their sound, to the final mastering process, each song is an unspoiled fingerprint unique to their long-held dynamic chemistry.
The duo’s 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.”
Slated for a June 30, 2023 release through Feel It Records across North America and Sub Pop globally, the duo’s highly-anticipated sophomore album, Good Living Is Coming For You was recorded and produced by Mondal and Schung in their Lawrence, KS-based home studio. In some way, the album’s title and its material is informed by more than a half-century of underground music revolutionaries, who have taken whacks at the mundane mainstream. English punks spat “NO FUTURE” at germ-free adolescents. Ohio New Wavers devolutionized mankind with whips. Athens art school students chomped at hero worship. MetroCard carrying riot grrls rebirthed the bomp with a gasoline gut. The duo read pandemic minds with 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out. With their forthcoming sophomore album, the return with a new message that initially offers hope wrapped around relief. But maybe it’s warning. Or darker still, a threat.
While the duo have amassed acclaim for unfussy, monolithic anthems, Good Living Is Coming For You is a decided change in sonic direction and approach: They’ve eschewed the brutalist ambience of their 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 Lawrence-based studio is a reverb-rich space, that helps influence the album’s overall sound. Thematically, the album’s material touches upon power struggles, accepting aging, breaking restraints and more, delivered with a fervent urgency.
Last month, I wrote about album opener “Eraser,” a gritty and furious ripper built around enormous shout-along worthy hooks and choruses, thunderous drumming, angular and propulsive bass lines, and distortion pedaled guitars paired with Mondal’s powerhouse delivery and copious amounts of reverb. While sonically recalling riot grrrl punk, complete with righteous and urgent fury, “Eraser,” as the duo explain is “a malevolent creep – an overly ambitious, shadowy force who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. She watches your every move, mirrors your motions, and ultimately uses your voice against you without you ever noticing what she’s done. She’s unchecked ambition, a paranoid girl Friday, an overriding impulse to reflect rather than project. She must be stopped at all costs.”
Good Living Is Coming For You‘s second and latest single, “You Shatter” is a synth punk ripper that sounds like a synthesis of Freedom of Choice-era DEVO, Memphis synth punks Nots and the Go-Go’s. “‘You Shatter’ is our ode to being a hammer,” the duo say of the song.
Sweeping Promises will be embarking on an extensive tour schedule to support the album, The tour includes an August 8, 2023 stop at Johnny Brenda‘s, one of my favorite rooms in Philly, and an August 10, 2023 stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Check out the tour dates below.
Good Living Is Coming For You is available now to preorder from Feel It Records & Sub Pop. LP pre-orders from Feel It Records will be on white/black marbled vinyl, and those from megamart.subpop.com will receive copies on red vinyl (while supplies last).
Tour Dates
Tue. Aug. 01 – St Louis, MO – Off Broadway Wed. Aug. 02 – Cincinnati, OH – MOTR Pub Thu. Aug. 03 – Nashville, TN – Blue Room at Third Man Fri. Aug. 04 – Atlanta, GA – 529 Sat. Aug. 05 – Durham, NC – The Pinhook Mon. Aug. 07 – Washington, DC – Songbyrd Music House Tue. Aug. 08 – Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s Thu. Aug. 10 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg Fri. Aug. 11 – Brattleboro, VT – The Stone Church Sat. Aug. 12 – Somerville, MA – Crystal Ballroom Mon. Aug. 14 – Montreal, QC – Bar Le Ritz PDB Tue. Aug. 15 – Toronto, ON – The Garrison Wed. Aug. 16 – Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop Fri. Aug. 18 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall Sat. Aug. 19 – Milwaukee, WI – Back Room at Colectivo Sun. Aug. 20 – Minneapolis, MN – 7th Street Entry Sat. Sep. 09 – Denver, CO – Lost Lake Mon. Sep. 11 – Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court Tue. Sep. 12 – Boise, ID – Neurolux Thu. Sep. 14 – Vancouver, BC – Wise Hall Fri. Sep. 15 – Seattle, WA – Madame Lou’s Sat. Sep. 16 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Tue. Sep. 19 – San Francisco, CA – The Chapel Wed. Sep. 20 – Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room Fri. Sep. 22 – San Diego, CA – Casbah Sat. Sep. 23 – Tucson, AZ – Club Congress Tue. Sep. 26 – Austin, TX – Empire Control Room Wed. Sep. 27 – Denton, TX – Andy’s Fri. Sep. 29 – Memphis, TN – Gonerfest
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. Their relentless practice has made perfect: Meticulously controlling every aspect of their craft, from the first note they write together, through production and engineering, using space as a key element of their sound, to the final mastering process, each song is an unspoiled fingerprint unique to their long-held dynamic chemistry.
The duo’s 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” and their highly-anticipated sophomore album Good Living Is Coming For You.
Slated for a June 30, 2023 release through Feel It Records across North America and Sub Pop globally, Good Living Is Coming For You was recorded and produced by Mondal and Schung in their Lawrence, KS-based home studio. In some way, the album’s title and its material is informed by more than a half-century of underground music revolutionaries, who have taken whacks at the mundane mainstream. English punks spat “NO FUTURE” at germ-free adolescents. Ohio New Wavers devolutionized mankind with whips. Athens art school students chomped at hero worship. MetroCard carrying riot grrls rebirthed the bomp with a gasoline gut. The duo read pandemic minds with 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out. With their forthcoming sophomore album, the return with a new message that initially offers hope wrapped around relief. But maybe it’s warning. Or darker still, a threat.
While the duo have amassed acclaim for unfussy, monolithic anthems, Good Living Is Coming For You is a decided change in sonic direction and approach: They’ve eschewed the brutalist ambience of their 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 Lawrence-based studio is a reverb-rich space, that helps influence the album’s overall sound. Thematically, the album’s material touches upon power struggles, accepting aging, breaking restraints and more, delivered with a fervent urgency.
“Eraser,” the forthcoming album’s opening track and first single, is a gritty and furious ripper built around enormous, shout-along worthy hooks and choruses, thunderous drumming, angular and propulsive bass lines, distortion pedaled guitars paired with Mondal’s powerhouse delivery and copious amounts of reverb. While sonically recalling riot grrrl punk, complete with righteous and urgent fury, “Eraser,” as the duo explain is “a malevolent creep – an overly ambitious, shadowy force who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. She watches your every move, mirrors your motions, and ultimately uses your voice against you without you ever noticing what she’s done. She’s unchecked ambition, a paranoid girl Friday, an overriding impulse to reflect rather than project. She must be stopped at all costs.”
Along with the release of Good Living Is Coming For You‘s first single, the duo announced an extensive list of tour dates to support the album. The tour includes an August 8, 2023 stop at Johnny Brenda‘s, one of my favorite rooms in Philly, and an August 10, 2023 stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Check out the tour dates below.
Good Living Is Coming For You is available now to preorder from Feel It Records & Sub Pop. LP pre-orders from Feel It Records will be on white/black marbled vinyl, and those from megamart.subpop.com will receive copies on red vinyl (while supplies last).
Currently comprised of Lawrence, KS-born, New York-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Dave Liang, who cut his teeth as a producer with Bad Boy Records, and multi-disciplinary artist Sun Yunfan, the Brooklyn-based electronic duo The Shanghai Restoration project was initially began as a solo recording project that received attention for organically meshing Chinese instrumentation and hip-hop — although with subsequent releases, Liang increasingly expanded upon his sound, drawing upon choral music, downtempo electronica and folk. Interestingly enough, in 2010, Liang met Shanghai-based jazz vocalist Zhang Le, with whom he released a series of contemporary interpretations of Chinese jazz standards that caught the attention of NPR’s All Songs Considered. The following year, Liang met Sun Yunfan and the two started collaborating on music videos and live performance visuals before eventually working on songwriting and production, including Liang’s ongoing collaboration with Zhang Le, LifeElsewhere, an album, which was well-received in China and nominated for several national awards.
The duo’s latest effort R.U.R. derives its title from a 1920’s Czech play Rossum’s Universal Robotsfrom which the word robot originates. Self-produced and recorded in New York over the past year or so, the album, imagines a post apocalyptic world in which humans have been replaced by robots, who have been trying to understand what led to their predecessors’ extinction. Via a time capsule, the robots learn about humanity’s must noble and profound endeavors such as art, agriculture, science, philosophy and so on, as well as humanity’s worst attributes such as narcissism, materialism, greed, environmental devastation — and as they’re looking at the time capsule, they begin to wonder if the universe will ever see and experience those rather peculiar beings again.
Sonically speaking, the album is reportedly a shift in sonic direction from being whimsical towards a much more introspective approach with the duo setting to find some sort of balance within chaos, with the duo experimenting with a dissonant and polyrhythmic approach featuring atonal analog synth lines, household items being sampled, Malaysian rainforest insects, China’s omnipresent in-store marketing chants and the sounds of outer space. In fact, the album’s latest single “Spooky Party” features breezy, Tropicalia and African-inspired polyrhythm paired with arpeggio analog synths and stuttering beats — and while being decidedly retro-futuristic, it may be the most dance floor friendly track they’ve released to date.
Featuring core members, founder and creative mastermind Isaac Flynn (vocals), who comes from a family of musicians and whose parents own Lawrence, KS‘ well-regarded guitar store, Mass Street Music; Eric Davis (keys, synths) and Garrett Childers (guitar, vocals), the Kansas City-based indie rock act Hembree received regional and national attention with the release of “Can’t Run Forever,” a shimmering and slickly produced, dance-floor friendly track that simultaneously nods at 80s New Wave, St. Lucia, and Interpol simultaneously.
Building upon the success of “Can’t Run Forever,” a track that has seen as of this post, over 500,000 Spotify and YouTube streams, the members of the Kansas City-based band went to record new material at Los Angeles-based Sunset Sound Studios with Chris Coady, who has worked with Beach House, Future Islands and Yeah Yeah Yeahs; but when Flynn returned home to Kansas City, he decided that those sessions should be tabled, and that it was time for the band to take a much different approach. “After ‘Can’t Run Forever’ came out, I was feeling the pressure to make our second single bigger and better, and found myself putting limitations on my writing,” Flynn explained in press notes.. “After being frustrated for several months, I decided to record whatever I want; just let it all pour out.” And with that mindset, Flynn, his bandmates Davis and Childers recorded their latest single “Holy Water,” with Foreign Fields’ Eric Hillman contributing additional production and Joe Visciano, who has worked with The Kills, Jamie xx and Beck mixing the proceedings.
“Holy Water” is a decided change in sound, as the swaggering and propulsive track nods at Kasabian and Primal Scream as the band pairs an an arena rock and dance floor-friendly hook with a slick production featuring layers of undulating synths, twinkling keys, enormous, tweeter and woofer rocking beats with a “we’re ready to take over the world right this fucking moment” feel. Interestingly, part of the song’s anthemic nature stems from the song’s overwhelmingly positive message. As Flynn says of the song, “The song started with me making a conscious decision to stop letting the bad win. It was time to start embracing the obstacles and then doing my best to overcome them. I really just want to be true to myself and good to others, and I want the same for other people. Perhaps that’s the message from this song.” Certainly, considering how maddening and dire everything seems on a daily basis, any positive message seems desperately necessary. Unsurprisingly, since the single’s release at the end of last year, the song has seen regular rotation on 10 Midwestern radio markets including Columbus, OH; St. Louis, MO; and the Kansas City area — and the track has seen over 250,000 Spotify steams as of this writing.
The band will be going on a run of tour dates in the Midwest, with the first show of the tour, finding the band opening for Cold War Kids. Check out the tour dates below.
Formed by its founding and primary member Christopher Crisi, the Lawrence, KS-based indie rock act The Appleseed Cast has over the course of 20 years and 7 full-length efforts developed a reputation for constantly changing lineups — while subtly refining and honing the sound that won the band major acclaim in the early 2000s and onward; in fact, the band’s seminal work Low Level Owl, Vol I and Vol II received a 9.0 from Pitchfork and it was followed by the critically applauded release of Two Conversations, Peregrine, Illumination Ritual and several others for a sound that at one point or another had been compared to the likes of Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral and others as their material has meshed post-punk, emo rock, punk rock, shoegaze with anthemic hooks, as the band’s current lineup featuring touring musicians Ben Kimball, Nick Fredrickson and several others.
Throughout October and November, the members of The Appleseed Cast will be on tour with the Beverly, MA-based sextet Caspian, who to only are making their last tour stops to support their 2015 release Dust and Disquiet; but the Beverly, MA-based band has also publicly cited Crisi and The Appleseed Cast as a major influence on their sound. And with the announcement of the tour, the Lawrence, KS-based project released their latest single “Great Lake Derelict,” a propulsive track that pairs shimmering guitar chords, played through gentle amounts of reverb, soaring synths, plaintive vocals and arena rock friendly anthemic hooks in a song that manages to possess intimate and earnest emotion while being cinematic.
As for the tour, check out the tour dates below. You’ll see that it’ll include a mid-November stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg.
Caspian + The Appleseed Cast 2016 tour dates
10.22 · Washington, DC – Rock and Roll Hotel (tickets)
10.23 · Raleigh, NC – Kings (tickets)
10.24 · Atlanta, GA – Masquerade (tickets)
10.25 · Nashville, TN – Exit/In (tickets)
10.27 · Houston, TX – Studio @ Warehouse Live (tickets)
10.28 · Austin, TX – Sidewinder (tickets)
10.30 · Phoenix, AZ – The Rebel Lounge (tickets)
11.01 · Los Angeles, CA – Teragram Ballroom (tickets)
11.02 · San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall (tickets)
11.04 · Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios (tickets)
11.05 · Seattle, WA – Neumo’s (tickets)
11.08 · Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge (tickets)
11.09 · Denver, CO – Marquis Theater (tickets)
11.11 · Omaha, NE – The Waiting Room (tickets)
11.12 · St. Louis, MO – Firebird (tickets)
11.13 · Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall (tickets)
11.14 · Grand Rapids, MI – Pyramid Scheme (tickets)
11.15 · Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace (tickets)
11.16 · Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer (tickets)
11.17 · Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg (tickets)
11.18 · Boston, MA – Royale (tickets)
11.19 · Montreal, QC – Le Ritz (tickets)
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