Tag: Sub Pop Records

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Weird Nightmare Shares Punchy “Pay No Mind”

Almost every band that’s worth a damn has had a member, who at some point worked in a record store. With JOVM mainstay acts METZ and Weird Nightmare, it was frontman and creative mastermind Alex Edkins. Slinging indie rock and hardcore records at his hometown record store while attending university, Edkins became an ardent student of rock ‘n’ roll from the psychedelic 1960s to the DIY 1990s and beyond. 

Hoopla, Edkins’ sophomore Weird Nightmare album, which is slated for a May 1, 2026 release through Sub Pop globally and Dine Alone Records in Canada, reportedly sees the JOVM mainstay mixing and matching these wide-ranging influences in fun, exhilarating combinations, showcasing his sophisticated musical mind, while continuing to showcase his unerring knack for ridiculously catchy and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

Co-produced by Edkins and Spoon‘s Jim Eno at Providence‘s world famous Machines With Magnets, Hoopla also sees the acclaimed Canadian artist expanding upon Weird Nightmare’s musical palette with the addition of piano, bells and castanets, which give his long-held straightforward songwriting a shiny luster. 

The album will feature the previously released “Forever Elsewhere,” and the Cheap Trick-like “Might See You There.”

Hoopla‘s third and latest single “Pay No Mind” is a punchy, downright punk rock-like take on power pop, anchored around Edkins’ unerring knack for ridiculously catchy hooks and big riffs paired with what may arguably be his most socially aware, thoughtful lyrics of his growing catalog.

“We had a blast making this video with director Ryan Faist,” the Weird Nightmare creative mastermind says,. “It was a nod to the Elvis Costello and the Attractions ‘Pump it Up‘ video and some early footage of the Buzzcocks on cable access TV. 
 
“The lyric was lifted from an Atlantic City tourism t-shirt. ‘I’m so broke, I can’t even pay attention‘ struck me as a particularly accurate comment on modern life. Obviously, the shirt is meant to be funny, but it felt quite dark to me. Due to the overwhelming onslaught of information and emotional baggage that comes with it, I think there is a tendency for people’s lives to become quite myopic. As a coping mechanism, we become more and more insular, ignoring the world around us.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Chat Pile’s Limited Edition “Masks”/”Sifting” 7-Inch Released on DSPS

Last year, acclaimed Oklahoma City-based noise rock outfit Chat Pile — Raygun Busch (vocals), Luther Manhole (guitar), Stin (bass) and Cap’n Ron (drums) — released the limited 7″ vinyl single “Masks”/”Stifling” through Sub Pop Records.

The limited edition vinyl quickly sold out. So, the legendary Seattle-based label just released the 7″ inch vinyl digitally on all the DSPs. Now, if you’re a physical media collector, don’t you fret. You still have a shot to grab the band’s tour-only version pressed on peach vinyl available at their live shows. They also have a collaborative logo T-shirt, too. Of course, that merch will be available while supplies last.

The A-side “Masks” is a bruising ripper that seemingly channels a synthesis of shoegaze, Bambara and Screaming Life/Fopp-era Soundgarden paired with an unhinged and punchy vocal turn from Raygun Busch. It’s a mosh pit friendly anthem meant to be played at eardrum shatteringly loud levels.

The B-side seems the Oklahoman noise rockers tackling Nirvana‘s, “Shifting” which appears on the legendary grunge trio’s 1989 effort Bleach. The Chat Pile cover manages to be simultaneously a lovingly straightforward take that’s also much more bruising and forceful than the original.

“Sub Pop is thrilled that Chat Pile graced us with these two massive songs, and we couldn’t be happier to add them to the list of greats who have released music for the label,” the label says.
 
“It’s a true dream to put out a single on Sub Pop, and our new song ‘Masks’ hopefully honors the spirit of the mythical, sometimes mystical, city of Seattle,” Chat Pile adds. “Thanks in part to the movie Hype, we have long been obsessed with Seattle, the American underground of the late ‘80s, and Sub Pop and their tools of world domination. Everything we learned about packaging Chat Pile, we learned from Sub Pop co-founders Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt.
 
“We wanted to cover a song from the early Sub Pop era, and something off Bleach seemed the obvious choice. Songs like ‘Paper Cuts,’ ‘Negative Creep,’ and especially ‘Sifting’ are fairly lateral to the type of sounds we make with Chat Pile. (Perhaps next time we’ll take on a TAD song!)
 
“To mark the occasion, we’ve also donated $3,000 to DREAM Action OK, a community-based organization that aims to empower our local immigrant community through advocacy and education to ensure justice for all immigrants. Learn more about DAOK here. 
 
“Thanks to Sub Pop for giving us the opportunity to put this single out – we hope you enjoy it. 
 
“And most importantly, FUCK ICE!”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Weird Nightmare Shares Sweetly Nostalgic and Anthemic “Might See You There”

Almost every band that’s worth a damn has had a member, who at some point worked in a record store. With JOVM mainstay acts METZ and Weird Nightmare, it was frontman and creative mastermind Alex Edkins. Slinging indie rock and hardcore records at his hometown record store while attending university, Edkins became an ardent student of rock ‘n’ roll from the psychedelic 1960s to the DIY 1990s and beyond.

Hoopla, Edkins’ sophomore Weird Nightmare album, which is slated for a May 1, 2026 release through Sub Pop globally and Dine Alone Records in Canada, reportedly sees the JOVM mainstay mixing and matching these wide-ranging influences in fun, exhilarating combinations, showcasing his sophisticated musical mind, while continuing to showcase his unerring knack for ridiculously catchy and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

Co-produced by Edkins and Spoon‘s Jim Eno at Providence‘s world famous Machines With Magnets, Hoopla also sees the acclaimed Canadian artist expanding upon Weird Nightmare’s musical palette with the addition piano, bells and castanets, which give his long-held straightforward songwriting a shiny luster.

The album will feature the previously released “Forever Elsewhere,” and the album’s latest single “Might See You There.” Seemingly channeling Cheap Trick and Weezer, “Might See You There” is a raise-your-beer in air and shout along with your best pals power pop anthem that continues to showcase Edkins’ remarkable craftsmanship. But the song is anchored in sweet, perhaps rose-colored glasses of nostalgia for one’s youth. In the case of “Might See You There,” the boredom, isolation and small joys of the narrator’s teenaged years, living in a small town — before the days of social media and constant screen time.

“‘Might See You There’ is about going back to visit my hometown and being flooded with teenage nostalgia,” Edkins explains. “Small-town boredom and isolation almost feel like a gift in today’s highly connected world. I feel fortunate for that time spent idly, down in the basement, learning the entire Rancid Let’s Go album on guitar with my friends. I find it easy to romanticise that time in my life, even though I was, without question, a disgruntled kid who badly wanted to escape my surroundings and see the world.
 
“I was listening to a lot of the Irish bands The Undertones and Protex while writing this one, and I think there is a fair bit of their influence,” the JOVM mainstay adds. “Just the simplicity and big bar chords mostly. Seth Manchester and I were very into the idea of adding piano and bells to the outro, akin to the Phil Spector-produced End of the Century album by The Ramones. The great Julianna Riolino sings with me on the choruses, too!”

The mind-bending, animated accompanying video was directed and edited by CC Mulligan.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Nation of Language Shares Tom Sharkett Rework of “Inept Apollo”

Last year was a big year for acclaimed Brooklyn-based synth pop trio and JOVM mainstays Nation of Language. The trio — Ian Richard Devaney (vocals, guitar), Aidan Noell (synths) and Alex MacKay (bass) — signed with Sub Pop Records, who released their Nick Milhiser produced and mixed fourth album, Dance Called Memory, continuing an ongoing collaboration that included 2023’s Strange Disciple.“What’s so great about Nick is his ability to make us feel like we don’t need to do what might be expected of us,” says Nation of Language’s Aidan Noell.  

Sonically, the album is imbued with a subtly shifted palette: On some tracks percussion is smashed through a synthesizer as a nod to early-2000s electronic music. Chopped-up drum break samples also make appearances.

But ultimately, for the trio, the hope was to weave raw vulnerability and humanity into a synth-heavy album. “There is a dichotomy between the Kraftwerk school of thought and the Brian Eno school of thought, each of which I’ve been drawn to at different points. I’ve read about how Kraftwerk wanted to remove all of the humanity from their music, but Eno often spoke about wanting to make synthesized music that felt distinctly human,” Nation of Language’s Ian Richard Devaney says. “As much as Kraftwerk is a sonically foundational influence, with this record I leaned much more towards the Eno school of thought. In this era quickly being defined by the rise of AI supplanting human creators, I’m focusing more on the human condition, and I need the underlying music to support that… Instead of hopelessness, I want to leave the listener with a feeling of us really seeing one another, that our individual struggles can actually unite us in empathy.”

The album features “Inept Apollo,” which continues a remarkable run of nostalgia-inducing 80s New Wave-inspired material that showcases the trio’s unerring knack for crafting slickly produced bops, anchored around earnest lyricism and songwriting.

Recently the JOVM mainstays shared Tom Sharkett‘s bold rework of “Inept Apollo.” Sharkett’s rework retains Devaney’s yearning vocal and some of the original’s New Wave/synth pop-inspired feel but noticeably increases the BPM and adds a strutting disco-like bass line. The result is a something that’s earnest, achingly yearning and yet even more dance floor friendly. It’s one-part Madchester-scene, one-part NYC dance club.

“We’re big fans of WH Lung, as well as Tom’s excellent recent LCD Soundsystem rework, so we were super excited when he reached out saying he wanted to take a crack at a new mix of ‘Inept Apollo,'” Devaney says. ” Our initial enthusiasm only grew when we received the end product a couple months later and were able to test it out in a club environment a few times. Can confidently report it sounds fantastic in a loud and crowded room. Here’s hoping it sees its way to a few dance floors in 2026.”
 
“I had an affinity with Nation of Language as soon as I heard their music,” Tom Sharkett says. “It felt like it came from the same place as the music I was making myself and with W. H. Lung, and the more of their music I heard, the more I felt it. It was hard initially to find a way in with remixing ‘Inept Apollo,’ as I loved the original so much. I knew I wanted to nod to the connection between NYC and Manchester started by the artists and DJs I feel we both love, without even having to name check them. It had to be wonky, and it had to be loose and lively. Hope you enjoy!”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Nation of Language Shares Swooning “Under the Water”

Acclaimed Brooklyn-based synth pop trio and JOVM mainstays Nation of Language — Ian Richard Devaney (vocals, guitar), Aidan Noell (synths) and Alex MacKay (bass) — have amass a rapidly growing and devout national and international fanbase as a result of a dance floor friendly sound that draws from New Wave, post-punk and shoegaze. The JOVM mainstays three albums, 2020’s Introduction, Presence, 2021’s A Way Forward and 2023’s Strange Disciple have received coverage from Billboard, The New York Times, Document Journal, BrooklynVegan, MOJO, NME, Pitchfork, Stereogum and lengthy list of others, including this site. 

Adding to a rapidly rising profile, the band has performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. They’ve also become a mainstay on the international festival circuit, playing sets at Austin City Limits, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound, Pukklepop, Corona Capital, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, and a growing list of others globally. And recently, “Weak In Your Light” was featured in the series finale of the Netflix hit show You.

Earlier this year, the acclaimed JOVM mainstays announced that they signed to Sub Pop Records, who will be releasing their new material globally in 2025 and beyond, including the band’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Dance Called Memory. Slated for a September 19, 2025 release, the 10-song album was recorded, produced and mixed by Holy Ghost‘s Nick Millhiser, who produced 2023’s Strange Disciple. “What’s so great about Nick is his ability to make us feel like we don’t need to do what might be expected of us,” says Nation of Language’s Aidan Noell. The album was mastered by Heba Kadry, who has worked on some of the most acclaimed records of the past decade or so. 

Sonically, the album is imbued with a subtly shifted palette: On some tracks percussion is smashed through a synthesizer to nod at early-2000’s electronic music. Chopped-up drum break samples make appearances, too. 

Ultimately, for the trio, the hope was to weave raw vulnerability and humanity into a synth-heavy album. “There is a dichotomy between the Kraftwerk school of thought and the Brian Eno school of thought, each of which I’ve been drawn to at different points. I’ve read about how Kraftwerk wanted to remove all of the humanity from their music, but Eno often spoke about wanting to make synthesized music that felt distinctly human,” Nation of Language’s Ian Richard Devaney says. “As much as Kraftwerk is a sonically foundational influence, with this record I leaned much more towards the Eno school of thought. In this era quickly being defined by the rise of AI supplanting human creators, I’m focusing more on the human condition, and I need the underlying music to support that… Instead of hopelessness, I want to leave the listener with a feeling of us really seeing one another, that our individual struggles can actually unite us in empathy.”

Dance Called Memory will feature the previously released “Inept Apollo” “I’m Not Ready for the Change,” and the album’s third and latest single, “Under the Water.” Anchored around a minimalist leaning arrangement of an oscillating synth melody paired with Devaney’s achingly yearning delivery, “Under the Water” subtly nods at Kraftwerk while being deeply human, expressing swooning longing and heart-wrenching regret — all while continuing to showcase the trio’s unerring knack for breezy, nostalgia-inducing synth pop.

“This was the last one to make the cut before we turned the record in,” the band’s Ian Richard Devaney says. “We’d always had a lot of enthusiasm for the track, but the studio schedule had gotten a bit unwieldy over the holidays and an arbitrary deadline had been set to be done with LP4 prior to leaving for a January tour in Australia supporting IDLES. As such we’d turned in the final album mixes for mastering before getting on the plane and I’d resigned myself to saving ‘Under the Water’ for some subsequent release down the line. But somewhere over the Pacific Ocean while trying to sequence the album clarity set in that despite our love for rigid adherence to the production calendar, we wanted it on there. So before soundchecks on the other side of the planet we hooked up all the synths we’d brought with us in the greenroom, remotely concocting the version you hear now. If it somehow sounds distinctly of the southern hemisphere, now you’ll all know why.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Nation of Language Share Woozy “I’m not Ready for the Change”

Acclaimed Brooklyn-based synth pop act and JOVM mainstays Nation of Language — Ian Richard Devaney (vocals, guitar), Aidan Noell (synths) and Alex MacKay (bass) — have managed to amass a rapidly growing and devout national and international fanbase as a result of a dance floor friendly sound that draws from New Wave, post-punk and shoegaze. The JOVM mainstays three albums, 2020’s Introduction, Presence, 2021’s A Way Forward and 2023’s Strange Disciple have received coverage from Billboard, The New York Times, Document Journal, BrooklynVegan, MOJO, NME, Pitchfork, Stereogum and lengthy list of others, including this site.

Adding to a rapidly rising profile, the band has performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Recently,  “Weak In Your Light” was featured in the series finale of the Netflix hit show You. They’ve also become a mainstay on the international festival circuit, playing sets at Austin City Limits, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound, Pukklepop, Corona Capital, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, and a growing list of others globally.

Last month, the acclaimed JOVM mainstays announced they signed to Sub Pop Records, who will be releasing their new material globally in 2025 and beyond, including the band’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Dance Called Memory. Slated for a September 19, 2025 release, the 10-song album was recorded, produced and mixed by Holy Ghost‘s Nick Millhiser, who produced 2023’s Strange Disciple. “What’s so great about Nick is his ability to make us feel like we don’t need to do what might be expected of us,” says Nation of Language’s Aidan Noell. The album was mastered by Heba Kadry, who has worked on some of the most acclaimed records of the past decade or so.

Sonically, the album is imbued with a subtly shifted palette: On some tracks percussion is smashed through a synthesizer to nod at early-2000’s electronic music. Chopped-up drum break samples make appearances, too.

Ultimately, for the trio, the hope was to weave raw vulnerability and humanity into a synth-heavy album. “There is a dichotomy between the Kraftwerk school of thought and the Brian Eno school of thought, each of which I’ve been drawn to at different points. I’ve read about how Kraftwerk wanted to remove all of the humanity from their music, but Eno often spoke about wanting to make synthesized music that felt distinctly human,” Nation of Language’s Ian Richard Devaney says. “As much as Kraftwerk is a sonically foundational influence, with this record I leaned much more towards the Eno school of thought. In this era quickly being defined by the rise of AI supplanting human creators, I’m focusing more on the human condition, and I need the underlying music to support that… Instead of hopelessness, I want to leave the listener with a feeling of us really seeing one another, that our individual struggles can actually unite us in empathy.”

Dance Called Memory will feature the previously released “Inept Apollo,” which continues a run of nostalgia-inducing, 80s New Wave-inspired material, while furthering their unerring knack for crafting slickly produced dance floor numbers anchored around earnest lyricism.

“I’m Not Ready for the Change,” Dance Called Memory‘s second and latest single features chopped up drum breaks seemingly inspired by Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine, glittering arpeggiated synths paired with whirring guitars and the band’s long-held penchant for enormous hooks and lived-in lyrics.

Directed by longtime collaborator John McKay, the accompanying, stylishly shot video features the trio performing the song in a studio — and for you fellow old heads, will subtly remind you of early 1980s MTV.

Along with the single and album announcements, the JOVM mainstay will be busy throughout the summer and fall. They’re will be opening for Death Cab for Cutie on their Plans: 20th Anniversary Tour for four dates: Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena on July 31, 2025 and August 2, 2025 and for two-sold out shows in Chicago’s Chicago Theatre, August 5, 2025 and August 6, 2025. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Nation of Language Share Shimmering “Inept Apollo”

Acclaimed Brooklyn-based synth pop act and JOVM mainstays Nation of Language — Ian Richard Devaney (vocals, guitar), Aidan Noell (synths) and Alex MacKay (bass) — have managed to amass a rapidly growing and devout national and international fanbase as a result of a dance floor friendly sound that draws from New Wave, post-punk and shoegaze. The JOVM mainstays three albums, 2020’s Introduction, Presence, 2021’s A Way Forward and 2023’s Strange Disciple have received coverage from Billboard, The New York Times, Document Journal, BrooklynVegan, MOJO, NME, Pitchfork, Stereogum and more.

Adding to a rapidly rising profile, the band has performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and recently “Weak In Your Light” was featured in the series finale of the Netflix hit show You. They’ve also become a mainstay on the international festival circuit, playing sets at Austin City Limits, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound, Pukklepop, Corona Capital, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, and a growing list of others.

The acclaimed outfit recently signed to Sub Pop Records, who will release their new music globally in 2025 and beyond. The Brooklyn trio’s Sub Pop debut “Inept Apollo” continues a run of nostalgia-inducing, 80s New Wave-inspired material while further cementing reputation for crafting slickly produced dance floor friendly numbers anchored around earnest lyricism and songwriting.

“Work is a respite from pain. Whether it’s a paying job or just the thing you pour yourself into, having a direction to move in, finding a flow state, it can move focus away from the heaviness of the heart. So after life’s losses, in moments of despair, we resolve time and time again to dive headfirst into the work as best we can,” Devaney says of the new single. “But the artistic process also tends to be when imposter syndrome rears its ugly head – when I find my inner monologue spiraling: ‘this is the best coping mechanism I have at my disposal and I’m not even qualified to be doing it.’

He continues, “Accompanying the song is a killer music video by our friend and brother John MacKay: it is an homage to creative pursuits, and in some ways came to represent the feeling of living in a city as an artist. The video feels like walking through an old warehouse in Brooklyn, full of practice spaces and studios, each room occupied by artists striving to express and understand themselves and their place in the world. No matter how bizarre the act may seem or how much self-doubt or pain runs through the mind of the creator, the beautiful thing is the striving and continuing on, rather than the final product or any notion of ‘success.’ The power of creation belongs to all of us; requires the approval of none.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Tunde Adebimpe + Thee Black Boltz Performs “Somebody New” on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”

Live footage of Tunde Adebimpe + Thee Black Boltz performing “Somebody New” on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe Shares Dance Floor-Friendly “Somebody New”

Tunde Adebimpe, the frontman of the critically acclaimed Brooklyn-based band TV On The Radio will be releasing his long-awaited, highly-anticipated solo debut Thee Black Boltz Friday (!) through Sub Pop Records.

The Adebimpe and Wilder Zoby co-produced album features additional production and contributions from TV On The Radio’s Jaleel Bunton and Japhet Landis and more. The album’s material will not only showcase Adebimpe imitable voice and visionary soundscapes, but is a nod to his propensity to write and sing about the human condition — in all its form, under all its stressor, both big and small. 

Thee Black Boltz isn’t a TV On The Radio album. But for Adebimpe, in a lot of ways, the excitement of doing something on his own for the first time ignited a similar creative spark as during the early TVOTR days. The songwriting process is the same, he says, but with his bandmates, Adebimpe always knew that have didn’t have to complete his musical ideas. “I’ve been doing this thing with this group of people for so long, that I can just have a vague sketch of a concept and I know Jaleel or Kyp will have five brilliant ideas on where it can go,” he says. “But for Thee Black Boltz, I didn’t have that scaffolding to hang on. That was both terrifying and exhilarating.”

The album’s title is Adebimpe’s response to the macro unease of a post-pandemic world careening towards violent authoritarianism and the immense grief that has come from deeply personal losses, specifically the sudden passing of his younger sister while making it. In many ways, Thee Black Boltz is the TVOTR frontman’s desperate grasping of small moments of joy amidst the dissonance, chaos and sadness in any way he could. And understandably, the album was a way of processing everything in his life. “It was my way of building a rock or a platform for myself in the middle of this fucking ocean,” he says. 

As he writes in his notebook, “The sparks of inspiration/motivation / hope that flash up in the midst of (and sometimes as a result of) deep grief, depression or despair. Sort of like electrons building up in storm clouds clashing until they fire off lightning and illuminate a way out, if only for a second.”

“Also,” he adds. “it’s a good name for a cool metal band, and I think that most people would describe me as akin to a very cool metal band.” 

Earlier this year, I wrote about the Jahpet Landis-produced “Drop,” a meditative and deeply introspective song featuring looped beatboxing, shimmering and strummed bursts of guitar, whistling and skittering beats serving as a dreamy and subtly uneasy bed for Adebimpe’s plaintive delivery questioning the purpose of it all, when things seem so brutally nonsensical.

Thee Black Boltz‘s fourth and latest single “Somebody New” is a dance floor friendly synth-driven bop that recalls 80s synth pop — i.e., Nu Shooz “I Can’t Wait,” Depeche Mode‘s “I Can’t Get Enough,” Yaz‘s “Situation” and the like — but while rooted in modern thematic concerns.

The Adebimpe-directed video for “Somebody New” is a feverishly trippy and surreal bit of time travel back to the days of Soul Train and American Bandstand as we see the TVOR frontman performing the song in a crowded room of beautiful young people dancing — and a glammed out Gritty-styled puppet.

“I’m positive I fell asleep on a couch with the TV on sometime in 1982 and fever dreamt this exact thing,” Adebimpe says of the new video.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Deep Sea Diver Shares Anthemic “What Do I Know”

Deep Sea Diver‘s long awaited and highly-anticipated fourth album, the 11-song, Jessica Dobson and Andy Park co-produced Billboard Heart is slated for a February 28, 2025 release through Sub Pop. The album reportedly puts the band – currently, Dobson, her spouse Peter Mansen (drums) and Elliot Jackson (guitar, synths) — in the company of acts like St. Vincent, TV on the Radio,Flock of Dimes and others, that have found ornate and magnetic ways to make indie rock by discarding notions of how it must sound or what it must say. 

The album features additional production from Adam Schatz and additional contributions from The Shins‘ Yuuki Matthews, Caroline Rose and Greg Leisz. It was mixed by Park and mastered by Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone. 

Some background is needed here: Back in July 2023 while recording in a Los Angeles-based studio, Dobson played a guitar solo but somehow felt nothing. Just a few days earlier, her band played a series of semi-secret shows for fans at a hometown bar, de facto rehearsals for cutting a new record. The sets had gone well; but almost immediately, the sessions didn’t. The songs’ essence seemed muddled, Dobson’s conviction lost somewhere in the 1,000 miles or so between Southern California and the Seattle-based home studio she shares with her spouse and frequent cowriter Peter Mansen. 

On that first night of recording sessions, Dobson broke down, wondering what she was doing there and what her band could do to fix it. For the first time in their history, the band retreated and headed home without a completed album. Did they need to scrap the entire thing and start again with new material? 

As it turned out, no. Following a brief break, Dobson found a renewed sense of self, a trust in her vision for her band and songs and her ability to capture them. After the Los Angeles hiccup a few months before, longtime collaborator and producer Andy Park asked Dobson how the new material was going over at an early fall dinner. She admitted that she needed help. And in that humbling confession, she seen found ways of working that helped her reimagine and reinvigorate the band — and directly led to their fourth album. 

For Dobson, the album is a triumph over self-doubt in which what initially felt like failure became an opportunity to find new freedom, belief, and even strength. 

As it turned out, the massive success of their third album Impossible Weight caused Dobson to doubt her impulses, and to begin thinking about what an idea’s impact or reception might be as much the strength of the idea itself. During this period of second-guessing, she and Mansen sat near the wide windows of their Seattle living room, with her on piano as he hammered a guitar nearby. Album track “See in the Dark” — a song about coveting your notions, despite the occasional sense they’re slipping away — emerged in that setting. 
 
That particular moment of domestic creation was essential for a number of reasons. Before Impossible Weight, Dobson and Mansen wrote many of Deep Sea Diver’s songs together; this was a return to that bond, which managed to carry over to more than half Billboard Heart‘s material. The pair began recording more at home, too. They borrowed microphones and a small batch of essential gear to record guitars and vocals in their basement. 

When discussions later began in earnest with Park, following the Los Angeles incident, Dobson began revisiting those earlier recordings, realizing that she had captured much of that ineffable spark at home, where the atmosphere was of her own design. Mansen and Park helped convince her that these wasn’t just good enough to use, but riveting in their realness. These early versions became templates to build upon and a frame, and a way for Dobson to believe again in the material, and most importantly, herself. 

The album will feature the album title track “Billboard Heart,” as well as two singles I wrote about on this site:

  • “Let Me Go,” a slow-burning Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey-like anthemic ballad that sees the ballad collaboration with Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Madison Cunningham 

  • “Shovel,” a Kate Bush-meets-St. Vincent-like tune that sees the band crafting hook-driven arena rock friendly anthems informed by lived-in, personal yet somehow deeply universal experience 

“What Do I Know,” Billboard Heart‘s third and latest single continues a run of punchy post-punk-like numbers with a rousingly anthemic, arena rock friendly hook and chorus. But much its predecessors, “What Do I Know” reveals the band’s remarkably adroit yet earnest, heart worn proudly on sleeve-driven songwriting while serving as a forceful reminder of Dobson’s powerhouse vocals and dexterous guitar work.

Directed by Eric Luck and Deep Sea Diver’s Peter Manson, the vibrant jump-cut style accompanying video features the band playing the song in a small room with the family dog, various friends in costume and other surreal things go on around them. The band continues onward — playfully accepting whatever is going on around them.

“‘What Do I Know’ holds a special place on the record. It is the first song that I engineered all of the instruments myself at my home studio,” Dobson explains. “At the time, I thought I was recording a demo and most of the parts are first takes. We kept all of the imperfections, and nothing was overthought. For the music video, we wanted to lean into that same spirit and gave ourselves only a few hours to film in a very small space. The song is equally existential as it is tongue in cheek, and we wanted the video to reflect more of the raw elements of who we are as a band.” 
 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Deep Sea Diver Teams Up with Madison Cunningham on Power Ballad “Let Me Go”

Led by Los Angeles-born, Seattle-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and frontperson Jessica Dobson, Seattle-based indie rock outfit Deep Sea Diver can trace its origins back to when Dobson was 19: Dobson, who has had stints  playing with a who’s who list of contemporary acts, including Beck, Conor Oberst, Spoon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Shins signed with Atlantic Records. While with Atlantic Records, Dobson wrote and recorded two albums that she wasn’t completely satisfied with. Atlantic shelved the material and ultimately dropped her. 

After being dropped from Atlantic, Dobson wrote and recorded her solo debut EP New Caves as Deep Sea Diver. The project became a full-fledged band with the addition of members John Raines (bass) Dobson’s spouse Peter Mansen (drums), Garrett Gue (bass), and Elliot Jackson (guitar, synth), who helped to flesh out the project’s sound. 

The Seattle-based band’s critically applauded third album, 2020’s Impossible Weightwas released through High Beam Records/ATO Records and followed a busy year of touring with Wilco and Joseph to support their second album, 2016’s Secrets. “We went into the studio pretty quickly after the tour ended, and I sort of hit a wall where I was feeling very detached from making music, and unable to find joy in it,” Dobson recalls in press notes. “I realized I had to try to rediscover my voice as a songwriter, and figure out the vocabulary for what I needed to say on this album.”

Stepping back from music and the studio, Dobson focused on dealing with the depression she had been struggling with, and soon started volunteering at Aurora Commons, a drop-in center for unhoused people, most whom are drug-dependent and frequently engage in street-survival-based sex work. “I spent a lot of time with the women who frequent the Commons, and it taught me a new depth of empathy,” she says. “They’re people who don’t have the luxury of going back to a home at the end of the day and hiding behind those four walls, so they’re sort of forced to be vulnerable with what their needs are. Talking with them and listening to them really freed me up to start writing about things I’d never written about before in my songs.”

Co-produced by Dobson and Andy D. Park and recorded at Seattle’s Studio X and The Hall of Justice, Impossible Weight found Dobson and her bandmates digging far deeper emotionally than they had ever before — and pairing that emotionality with a bigger, more grandiose sound. While showcasing Dobson’s dexterous and forceful guitar work, the album’s overall lush textures and mercurial arrangements allow room for Dobson to fully demonstrate her vocal range in a way that she hadn’t before. “’I’d never produced a record before and I started out with low expectations for myself, but at some point I realized, ‘I can do this,’” Dobson recalls. “I decided to completely trust my voice and make really bold decisions in all my production calls—just push everything to the absolute outer edges.”

For Dobson redefining the limits of her artistry went hand-in-hand with deeper identity issues that came up while Dobson and her bandmates were working on the album. “I was adopted and just recently met my birth mother, and found out that I’m half-Mexican and half-Jewish,” Deep Sea Diver’s frontperson explained in press notes. “Discovering my heritage and learning things about myself that I never knew before really fed into that question of ‘Where do I belong?’” Simultaneously, Dobson rediscovered the sense of possibility, adventure and joy that she first felt when she started out as a 19 year-old.  “I think being signed at such a young age messed me up in terms of the expectations I put on myself,” she says. “Somewhere along the way I lost confidence in my own vision, but after making this record I feel a much larger freedom to go in whatever direction I want with my music.”

With Impossible Weight, Dobson hopes that others might reclaim a similar sense of freedom in their emotional lives. “Especially right now when the world is in disarray and there’s so much fear, I want this record to give people room to feel whatever they need to feel,” she says. “I hope it helps them recognize that it’s okay to fall apart, and that they’re meant to let others in instead of trying to work through everything on their own. Because the point is that the impossible weight isn’t yours to carry alone—that’s why it’s impossible.”

Signing to ATO was a significant step up for a band that had self-released its first two albums. The surge of resources resulted in a massive wave of exposure, including a spot on the Billboard charts. 

The Seattle-based outfit’s long-awaited and highly-anticipated fourth album, the 11-song, Dobson and Andy Park co-produced Billboard Heart is slated for a February 28, 2025 release through Sub Pop. The album reportedly puts the band– currently, Dobson, Mansen and Jackson — in the company of acts like St. Vincent, TV on the Radio,Flock of Dimes and others, that have found ornate and magnetic ways to make indie rock by discarding notions of how it must sound or what it must say. 

The album features additional production from Adam Schatz and additional contributions from The Shins‘ Yuuki Matthews, Caroline Rose and Greg Leisz. It was mixed by Park and mastered by Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone. 

Some background is needed here: Back in July 2023 while recording in a Los Angeles-based studio, Dobson played a guitar solo but somehow felt nothing. Just a few days earlier, her band played a series of semi-secret shows for fans at a hometown bar, de facto rehearsals for cutting a new record. The sets had gone well, but almost immediately, the sessions didn’t. The songs’ essence seemed muddled, Dobson’s conviction lost somewhere in the 1,000 miles or so between Southern California and the Seattle-based home studio she shares with her spouse and frequent cowriter Peter Mansen. 

On that first night of recording sessions, Dobson broke down, wondering what she was doing there and what her band could do to fix it. For the first time in their history, the band retreated and headed home without a completed album. Did they need to scrap the entire thing and start again with new material? 

As it turned out, no. Following a brief break, Dobson found a renewed sense of self, a trust in her vision for her band and songs and her ability to capture them. After the Los Angeles hiccup a few months before, longtime collaborator and producer Andy Park asked Dobson how the new material was going over at an early fall dinner. She admitted that she needed help. And in that humbling confession, she seen found ways of working that helped her reimagine and reinvigorate the band — and directly led to their fourth album. 

For Dobson, the album is a triumph over self-doubt in which what initially felt like failure became an opportunity to find new freedom, belief, and even strength. 

As it turned out, Impossible Weight‘s massive success caused Dobson to doubt her impulses, and to begin thinking about what an idea’s impact or reception might be as much the strength of the idea itself. During this period of second-guessing, she and Mansen sat near the wide windows of their Seattle living room, with her on piano as he hammered a guitar nearby. Album track “See in the Dark” — a song about coveting your notions, despite the occasional sense they’re slipping away — emerged in that setting. 
 
That particular moment of domestic creation was essential for a number of reasons. Before Impossible Weight, Dobson and Mansen wrote many of Deep Sea Diver’s songs together; this was a return to that bond, which managed to carry over to more than half Billboard Heart‘s material. The pair began recording more at home, too. They borrowed microphones and a small batch of essential gear to record guitars and vocals in their basement. 

When discussions later began in earnest with Park, following the Los Angeles incident, Dobson began revisiting those earlier recordings, realizing that she had captured much of that ineffable spark at home, where the atmosphere was of her own design. Mansen and Park helped convince her that these wasn’t just good enough to use, but riveting in their realness. These early versions became templates to build upon and a frame, and a way for Dobson to believe again in the material, and most importantly, herself. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Shovel,” a Kate Bush-meets-St. Vincent-like tune anchored around buzzing and angular power chords, glistening synth arpeggios, relentless four-on-the-floor serving as a lush yet punchy bed for Dobson’s big, earnest vocal. Much like Impossible Weight, the new single sees the band crafting hook-driven arena rock friendly anthems informed by lived-in, personal yet somehow deeply universal experience. 

The album will feature the previous released album title track and “Let Me Go,”a slow-burning Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey-like anthemic ballad that sees the ballad collaboration with Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Madison Cunningham.

Directed by the band’s Dobson and Tyler Kalberg and inspired by French New Wave films, the accompanying video for “Let Me Go” was filmed in and around Los Angeles on January 5, 2025 and follows Deep Sea Diver’s Dobson and Cunningham through a day in the life, hanging out and goofing off.

“I’ve been wanting to collaborate with Madison for a long time, and I was over the moon when this song came in such an unexpected moment,” Dobson says. “We were just jamming in the studio and I started playing a guitar riff that I’ve had kicking around since high school that Madison started immediately winding around on her guitar. We looped a drum machine that my co-producer Andy Park started playing and a few hours later most of the song was finished. This song felt effortlessly cool from the start; It reminds me of some of my favorite PJ Harvey songs, full of grit & power. We shot the music video with the same spirit, and as two LA natives who both love the city—we wanted to explore our hometown.  Not knowing that it was two days before the LA fires, it has subsequently taken on a new meaning as a love letter to the city we both adore.”

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

New Video: TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe Shares Meditative “Drop”

Tunde Adebimpe, the frontman of the critically acclaimed Brooklyn-based band TV On The Radio recently announced his long-awaited solo debut Thee Black Boltz.

Slated for an April 18, 2025 release through Sub Pop Records, the Adebimpe and Zoby Wilder co-produced album features additional production and contributions from TV On The Radio’s Jaleel Bunton and Japhet Landis and more. The album’s material will not only showcase Adebimpe imitable voice and visionary soundscapes, but is a nod to his propensity to write and sing about the human condition — in all its form, under all its stressor, both big and small.

Thee Black Boltz isn’t a TV On The Radio album. But for Adebimpe, in a lot of ways, the excitement of doing something on his own for the first time ignited a similar creative spark as during the early TVOTR days. The songwriting process is the same, he says, but with his bandmates, Adebimpe always knew that have didn’t have to complete his musical ideas. “I’ve been doing this thing with this group of people for so long, that I can just have a vague sketch of a concept and I know Jaleel or Kyp will have five brilliant ideas on where it can go,” he says. “But for Thee Black Boltz, I didn’t have that scaffolding to hang on. That was both terrifying and exhilarating.”

The album’s title is Adebimpe’s response to the macro unease of a post-pandemic world careening towards violent authoritarianism and the immense grief that has come from deeply personal losses, specifically the sudden passing of his younger sister while making it. In many way, Thee Black Boltz is the TVOTR frontman’s desperate grasping of small moments of joy amidst the dissonance, chaos and sadness in any way he could. And understandably, the album was a way of processing everything in his life. “It was my way of building a rock or a platform for myself in the middle of this fucking ocean,” he says.

As he writes in his notebook, “The sparks of inspiration/motivation / hope that flash up in the midst of (and sometimes as a result of) deep grief, depression or despair. Sort of like electrons building up in storm clouds clashing until they fire off lightning and illuminate a way out, if only for a second.”

“Also,” he adds. “it’s a good name for a cool metal band, and I think that most people would describe me as akin to a very cool metal band.” 

Thee Black Boltz‘s second single, the Jahpet Landis-produced “Drop” is a meditative and deeply introspective song featuring looped beatboxing, shimmering and strummed bursts of guitar, whistling and skittering beats serving as a dreamy and subtly uneasy bed for Adebimpe’s plaintive delivery questioning the purpose of it all, when things seem so brutally nonsensical. The song is accompanied by a vividly colored, animated visualizer.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Deep Sea Diver Shares Rousingly Anthemic “Shovel”

Led by Los Angeles-born, Seattle-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and frontperson Jessica Dobson, Seattle-based indie rock outfit Deep Sea Diver can trace its origins back to when Dobson was 19: Dobson, who has had stints  playing with a who’s who list of contemporary acts, including Beck, Conor Oberst, Spoon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Shins signed with Atlantic Records. While with Atlantic Records, Dobson wrote and recorded two albums that she wasn’t completely satisfied with. Atlantic shelved the material and ultimately dropped her.

After being dropped from Atlantic, Dobson wrote and recorded her solo debut EP New Caves as Deep Sea Diver. The project became a full-fledged band with the addition of members John Raines (bass) Dobson’s spouse Peter Mansen (drums), Garrett Gue (bass), and Elliot Jackson (guitar, synth), who helped to flesh out the project’s sound.

The Seattle-based band’s critically applauded third album, 2020’s Impossible Weight was released through High Beam Records/ATO Records and followed a busy year of touring with Wilco and Joseph to support their second album, 2016’s Secrets. “We went into the studio pretty quickly after the tour ended, and I sort of hit a wall where I was feeling very detached from making music, and unable to find joy in it,” Dobson recalls in press notes. “I realized I had to try to rediscover my voice as a songwriter, and figure out the vocabulary for what I needed to say on this album.”

Stepping back from music and the studio, Dobson focused on dealing with the depression she had been struggling with, and soon started volunteering at Aurora Commons, a drop-in center for unhoused people, most whom are drug-dependent and frequently engage in street-survival-based sex work. “I spent a lot of time with the women who frequent the Commons, and it taught me a new depth of empathy,” she says. “They’re people who don’t have the luxury of going back to a home at the end of the day and hiding behind those four walls, so they’re sort of forced to be vulnerable with what their needs are. Talking with them and listening to them really freed me up to start writing about things I’d never written about before in my songs.”

Co-produced by Dobson and Andy D. Park and recorded at Seattle’s Studio X and The Hall of Justice, Impossible Weight found Dobson and her bandmates digging far deeper emotionally than they had ever before — and pairing that emotionality with a bigger, more grandiose sound. While showcasing Dobson’s dexterous and forceful guitar work, the album’s overall lush textures and mercurial arrangements allow room for Dobson to fully demonstrate her vocal range in a way that she hadn’t before. “’I’d never produced a record before and I started out with low expectations for myself, but at some point I realized, ‘I can do this,’” Dobson recalls. “I decided to completely trust my voice and make really bold decisions in all my production calls—just push everything to the absolute outer edges.”

For Dobson redefining the limits of her artistry went hand-in-hand with deeper identity issues that came up while Dobson and her bandmates were working on the album. “I was adopted and just recently met my birth mother, and found out that I’m half-Mexican and half-Jewish,” Deep Sea Diver’s frontperson explained in press notes. “Discovering my heritage and learning things about myself that I never knew before really fed into that question of ‘Where do I belong?’” Simultaneously, Dobson rediscovered the sense of possibility, adventure and joy that she first felt when she started out as a 19 year-old.  “I think being signed at such a young age messed me up in terms of the expectations I put on myself,” she says. “Somewhere along the way I lost confidence in my own vision, but after making this record I feel a much larger freedom to go in whatever direction I want with my music.”

With Impossible Weight, Dobson hopes that others might reclaim a similar sense of freedom in their emotional lives. “Especially right now when the world is in disarray and there’s so much fear, I want this record to give people room to feel whatever they need to feel,” she says. “I hope it helps them recognize that it’s okay to fall apart, and that they’re meant to let others in instead of trying to work through everything on their own. Because the point is that the impossible weight isn’t yours to carry alone—that’s why it’s impossible.”

Signing to ATO was a significant step up for a band that had self-released its first two albums. The surge of resources resulted in a massive wave of exposure, including a spot on the Billboard charts.

The Seattle-based outfit’s long-awaited and highly-anticipated fourth album, the 11-song, Dobson and Andy Park co-produced Billboard Heart is slated for a February 28, 2025 release through Sub Pop. The album, which features the previously released album title track and “Let Me Go,” a collaboration with Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Madison Cunningham reportedly puts the band– currently, Dobson, Mansen and Jackson — in the company of acts like St. Vincent, TV on the Radio, Flock of Dimes and others, that have found ornate and magnetic ways to make indie rock by discarding notions of how it must sound or what it must say.

The album features additional production from Adam Schatz and additional contributions from The Shins‘ Yuuki Matthews, Caroline Rose and Greg Leisz. It was mixed by Park and mastered by Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone.

Some background is needed here: Back in July 2023 while recording in a Los Angeles-based studio, Dobson played a guitar solo but somehow felt nothing. Just a few days earlier, her band played a series of semi-secret shows for fans at a hometown bar, de facto rehearsals for cutting a new record. The sets had gone well, but almost immediately, the sessions didn’t. The songs’ essence seemed muddled, Dobson’s conviction lost somewhere in the 1,000 miles or so between Southern California and the Seattle-based home studio she shares with her spouse and frequent cowriter Peter Mansen.

On that first night of recording sessions, Dobson broke down, wondering what she was doing there and what her band could do to fix it. For the first time in their history, the band retreated and headed home without a completed album. Did they need to scrap the entire thing and start again with new material?

As it turned out, no. Following a brief break, Dobson found a renewed sense of self, a trust in her vision for her band and songs and her ability to capture them. After the Los Angeles hiccup a few months before, longtime collaborator and producer Andy Park asked Dobson how the new material was going over at an early fall dinner. She admitted that she needed help. And in that humbling confession, she seen found ways of working that helped her reimagine and reinvigorate the band — and directly led to their fourth album.

For Dobson, the album is a triumph over self-doubt in which what initially felt like failure became an opportunity to find new freedom, belief, and even strength.

As it turned out, Impossible Weight‘s massive success caused Dobson to doubt her impulses, and to begin thinking about what an idea’s impact or reception might be as much the strength of the idea itself. During this period of second-guessing, she and Mansen sat near the wide windows of their Seattle living room, with her on piano as he hammered a guitar nearby. Album track “See in the Dark” — a song about coveting your notions, despite the occasional sense they’re slipping away — emerged in that setting.
 
That particular moment of domestic creation was essential for a number of reasons. Before Impossible Weight, Dobson and Mansen wrote many of Deep Sea Diver’s songs together; this was a return to that bond, which managed to carry over to more than half Billboard Heart‘s material. The pair began recording more at home, too. They borrowed microphones and a small batch of essential gear to record guitars and vocals in their basement.

When discussions later began in earnest with Park, following the Los Angeles incident, Dobson began revisiting those earlier recordings, realizing that she had captured much of that ineffable spark at home, where the atmosphere was of her own design. Mansen and Park helped convince her that these wasn’t just good enough to use, but riveting in their realness. These early versions became templates to build upon and a frame, and a way for Dobson to believe again in the material, and most importantly, herself.

The album’s latest single “Shovel” is a Kate Bush-meets-St. Vincent-like tune anchored around buzzing and angular power chords, glistening synth arpeggios, relentless four-on-the-floor serving as a lush yet punchy bed for Dobson’s big, earnest vocal. Much like Impossible Weight, the new single sees the band crafting hook-driven arena rock friendly anthems informed by lived-in, personal yet somehow deeply universal experience.

Directed by Tyler Kalberg, Jessica Dobson, Peter Mansen, the accompanying video for “Shovel” follows the members of Deep Sea Diver in a red pickup truck driving to the woods to ostensibly bury something — or someone — or to find something under the cover of night and in the halogen glow of headlights. As Dobson is shoveling, she expressively dances and bops around. It’s brooding, cinematic and yet it’s quite playful.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: JOVM Mainstay Washed Out Performs “Wait on You” in Bandera, TX

Back in 2021, Washed Out‘s creative mastermind Earnest Greene left Atlanta and returned to the countryside he knew when he grew up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts, today, he’s preoccupied with the universe of wonder in the reality around him. 

He named the former horse farm he moved to “Endymion,” after the John Keats poem about a lovesick shepherd. It has shaped all that he’s created there, from his music to his albums’ creative direction to his planned large-scale visual-art experiments. 

Greene’s fifth Washed Out Album, Notes From A Quiet Life officially came out today through Sub Pop. The album is arguably one of Greene’s most audacious efforts to date, and is anchored around a purity of vision. It’s also the first album of his catalog that Greene wholly self-produced with mixing assistance from Nathan Boddy and David Wrench. 

In the lead up to the album’s release I wrote about three of the album’s singles:

“The Hardest Part,” a bit of classic Washed Out with subtle refinements. The atmospheric and achingly dream-like and nostalgia-inducing production is anchored around twinkling and arpeggiated keys, glistening bass synths, bursts of strummed guitar paired with Greene’s penchant for crafting catchy hooks and swooning choruses. And much like the JOVM mainstay’s most recent work, the song has Greene’s vocal front and center, with the song’s tale of love lost being the heartbroken star of the show. 

“Running Away,” a cinematic yet intimate and deeply vulnerable track anchored around an alternating quiet verse, loud chorus, quiet verse song structure paired with Greene’s unerring knack for soaring and catchy hooks paired with a lush arrangement of glistening and twinkling synths, skittering and thumping beats that furthers the album’s overall aesthetic. 

“Waking Up,” a track that features glistening and burbling synth arpeggios, dreamily strummed guitar, finger snap-driven percussion and skittering beats serving as a lush and cinematic bed for Greene’s intimately cooed delivery. Fittingly, the song evokes the sensation of waking up from a pleasant dream — and the wistful desire to go back to sleep to experience just a little bit longer. 

Notes From A Quiet Life‘s fourth and latest single “Wait on You” continues upon the album’s overall aesthetic — the classic Washed Out sound that has won Greene fans and acclaim everywhere but with subtle refinements: a chopped up vocal sample is paired with skittering beats, glistening Rhodes serve as a lush and satiny bed for Greene’s gently vocoder’ed, plaintive delivery. The result is a subtle house-leaning take on the Washed Out sound that also manages to feel both earnest and deliberately crafted.

Greene teamed up with director Jonah Haber to film a one-take live performance of “Wait on You” which was filmed on location in Bandera, TX — the same location where Greene’s live performance of “Waking Up” was shot.