Tag: sundayclub Camera Shy

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: sundayclub Shares Anthemic “Blue Wave”

Winnipeg-based indie duo sundayclub — Courtney and Nikki — have quickly cemented a sound and approach that blends hazy indie pop and dreamy textures with unfiltered storytelling. The result is material that’s much like blurry photograph, grainy yet glowing, fleeting yet full of feeling and life. 

The duo’s nine-song, self-titled, full-length debut is slated for a July 10, 2026 release through Paper Bag Records. Their debut is deeply informed by the stillness of rural Manitoba, where the duo started the band as a way of processing the very strange limbo of early adulthood — that feeling of being caught between who you once were and who you’re slowly becoming. Fittingly, the album is rooted in place: in a romanticized, re-examined Winnipeg with its hard edges softened in the way that memory often soften things. Thematically, the album touches upon growing up, growing apart and growing into your own skin. 

The album includes the previously released “Camera Shy,” and the album’s latest single “Blue Wave.” Built around a motorik pulse, fuzzy guitars and a euphoric, sing-along worthy hook and chorus, “Blue Wave” is an uptempo rousingly anthemic layered with three drum kits — and the product of over 170 vocal takes. Much like its predecessor, there’s a hauntingly bittersweet undertone to the song with the single leaning into the feeling of “pre-nostalgia,” which happens when you experience nostalgia in real time and began to feel as though you might miss the current moment before it’s passed. The song also references Courtney’s first car, a 2009 blue Pontiac Wave, lovingly named Trudy after its previous owner, and the memories Courtney and Nikki associated with the car — and with a specific period of their lives. So, in some way, the car was a bit of a time machine, and a way to explore the fuzzy and hazy spacers between the past and present.

“This song reminisces on the early days of a relationship in the midst of inner turmoil and uncertainty over what the future might hold,” Carmichael explains. “It’s about wanting to be a different, better, and more evolved version of yourself despite not being there yet, and seeking escapism in the past as a way to find solace. I felt impossibly restless at the time of writing the song and was just generally tired: tired of feeling like I wasn’t progressing, tired of being patient with the record we were making, tired of feeling vulnerable and overlooked. By looking back into the past, I could escape into a feeling of wistfulness to distract myself from how frustrated I was in the present.”

Directed by Qran Zhu, the accompanying video for “Blue Wave” was shot in Toronto and follows a young couple in love, who decided to steal two old bikes and go for a joyride. But what originally was young and mischievous whimsy turns into something much more dangerous and eventually tragic.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Winnipeg’s sundayclub Shares Wistful, Bittersweet “Camera Shy”

Winnipeg-based indie duo sundayclub — Courtney and Nikki — have quickly cemented a sound and approach that blends hazy indie pop and dreamy textures with unfiltered storytelling. The result is material that’s much like blurry photograph, grainy yet glowing, fleeting yet full of feeling and life.

The duo’s nine-song, self-titled, full-length debut is slated for a July 10, 2026 release through Paper Bag Records. Their debut is deeply informed by the stillness of rural Manitoba, where the duo started the band as a way of processing the very strange limbo of early adulthood — that feeling of being caught between who you once were and who you’re slowly becoming. Fittingly, the album is rooted in place: in a romanticized, re-examined Winnipeg with its hard edges softened in the way that memory often soften things. Thematically, the album touches upon growing up, growing apart and growing into your own skin.

The forthcoming album’s latest single “Camera Shy” is a superficially euphoric tune that actually expresses an underlying bittersweet ache, featuring Courtney’s wistful yet dreamy delivery ethereally floating over swirling shoegazer textures and atmospheric synths. The result is a song that’s simultaneously cinematic and deeply personal — with the song describing a hazy New Year’s Eve that starts off full of promise but somehow spirals out of control, and ends somewhere you and others never intended or even wanted. The song also orbits around a tension the band knows intimately: the compulsion to document and be documents versus the desire to simply disappear into a moment. There’s an acknowledgment that being seen, and being photographed, filmed, captured comes with the territory, even when you’re not quite feeling up to it.

The band add: “It’s about a good night gone very wrong — one of those back and forth, hazy NYE nights bound for absolute disaster. It references our obsession with the ‘moment’ and ever-present FOMO, but also introduces Court’s complicated feelings towards being photographed or ‘captured,’ as it’s referred to in the song. It can get really overwhelming and all-consuming when so much of your energy is put into your physical looks, especially when you just don’t feel like being in the spotlight.”

Directed by Qran Zhu, the accompanying video for “Camera Shy” captures a young couple in love, celebrating New Year’s Eve — with all the bright hopes and dreams of the upcoming year and future before the night spirals out of control with a drunken confrontation during a sundayclub show that leaves one of our protagonists by themselves just before midnight.