Tag: Will Yip

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Die Spitz Shares Seething “American Porn”

Rising Austin-based outfit Die Spitz — Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Ellie Livingston and Kate Halter — can trace some of their origins back to when Schrobilgen and Livingston met in preschool. They befriended Halter in middle school. And they brought De St. Aubin into their friend group when they started the band back in 2022. 

Initially, the quartet was looking to find reasons to hang out more often, and decided they should start a band after a late-night viewing of the Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt. They settled on the name Die Spitz over a “brown bag of Fireball,” opting for the feminine German definite article in place of the English. “It reminds me of the Grim Reaper spitting,” Livingstone jokes.

Their first live shows saw them pairing originals with covers from some of their early inspirations including Black Sabbath, Pixies, Mudhoney, PJ Harvey and Nirvana. Unsurprisingly, they express their ideas and themselves through a mischievously shameless blend of classic punk, hardcore metal, alt rock and more. They’ve also become known for riotous live show, where dueling cartwheels, members climbing rafters and solos while crowdsurfing could happen at just about any moment. 

The Texan quartet’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, the Will Yip–produced Something to Consume was released last September through Third Man Records. The album sees the band combining their passion, friendship, identity and artistry to fight against the inescapable decay and chaos that surrounds modern life, “There’s a political side to it, but addiction and love can also be all-consuming,” the band’s Ellie Livingston says. 

Something to Consume‘s 11 tracks contains multitudes and yet feels singular. It’s an expansive and expressive collection of songs, unified in its sense of deeply held camaraderie and freedom. “We depend on our freedom — freedom to do what we want, present the ideas we want, make the music we want,” Livingston says. “Whether it’s based in metal or something soft, no matter which of us wrote the song, we all contribute and work together. As a person, I don’t have a strong ego or voice, but within this band each one of us is capable of so much more.”

“Something to Consume is an album experience for everyone. Whether you’re craving a smack of lively metal or a melancholy wave of grungey violin, there’s a piece of all of us injected. Something to Consume is a call to the multitudes of ways we as humans allow consumption to enrapture our culture as well as ourselves.”

Though they’ve only been playing together for a few years, the album shows a maturity and technical prowess wielded and wed to the service of their deep and abiding friendship — and a hope to inspire change. “Some people aren’t interested in being political activists via music, but it weighs on me heavily and I feel misaligned with my calling if I don’t,” Chloe De St. Aubin says. “The four of us are free spirits with multiple interests, and there’s no limit or power dynamic that can derail us.”

The album features the previously released “Throw Yourself to the Sword,” a bruising mosh pit friendly synthesis of thrash metal, stoner rock and punk featuring some of the hardest and grimiest guitar riffs I’ve heard in some time. The album’s latest single “American Porn” comes as the quartet announces a lengthy list of summer and fall tour dates. The tour includes three New York City dates: November 13, 2026 and November 14, 2026 at Warsaw. Both of those shows are sold out. But don’t worry, they’ve got a February 19, 2027 stop at Brooklyn Steel. As always, all tour dates are below.

“American Porn” sees the rising Texans channeling a seething synthesis of grunge and riot grrl punk that calls out sexist record industry insiders and perverted older dudes, who come to their shows to leer and objectify them. “It’s a very angry song,” says the band’s Eleanor Livingston.” “And I want the people that come to our shows just because we’re pretty women or they want to sexualize or objectify us to listen to that song and tell us if they’re still a fan.”

Continuing an ongoing collaboration with director Emily Sanchez, the accompanying video for “American Porn” is a surreal fever dream of a visual that wouldn’t be out of place on 120 Minutes. The video calls out gender-roles, stereotypes and beauty standards with seething anger and a sense of mischief.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Talking Violet Shares Cathartic “Destroy”

https://youtu.be/5Jt6dWTGDno?si=ktqvo-4Q0wYmC4Ll

Windsor, ON-based quartet Talking Violet — Jillian Goyeau (vocals, guitar), Jayden Turnbull (guitar, vocals), Jeremie Brosseau (drums) and Dylan Iannicello (bass) — have quickly developed and established a sound that sees the Canadian outfit seamlessly blending elements of shoegaze, grunge and dream pop into what they’ve dubbed “dreamo.” Thematically, their work touches upon how we wrestle with the grief of personal change — especially in personal experiences. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about their Justin Meli-produced, Will Yip-mastered “In Your Mind,” a track that seemed to channel The Sundays and Tallies while capturing a very specific sense of loving someone through pain and uncertainty and not quite knowing what to do – or if there was anything you could do.

Their latest sgbnle “Destroy” continues a run of material that channels 120 Minutes-era MTV alt-rock while being anchored in earnestness and deeply lived in personal experience. Unlike its immediate predecessor, “Destroy” thematically and lyrically turns inward, offering a subtly uneasy sense of closure and acceptance. Although that relationship or chapter in your life has ended, their ghost lingers in your life — some longer than others.

“Destroy is about closing a chapter in my life where I experienced a lot of change which I talked a lot about throughout our Everything At Once record,” the band’s Jillian Goyeau says. “Before moving on I kinda needed to say goodbye, so that’s what Destroy does. It’s me finally accepting that people can both love you and hurt you at the same time and vice versa. You can love someone even when they aren’t meant to be in your life anymore.”

The Canadian band’s latest single continues the emotional thread of their latest album Everything At Once, drawing from the grief and heartache of interpersonal change. ” “These tracks draw on a lot of grief of change, most specifically, the grief of relationship changes in our lives,” Goyeau explains. “I was going through changes that I now see as necessary but were incredibly painful at the time. It made me realize how much I had depended on my relationships with others for my identity. I had to slowly relearn who I was—and spent the next few years healing my people-pleasing baseline. It’s still something I work on every day.”

Directed by Gavin Michael Booth the gorgeously shot video for “Destroy” features the members of the band smashing things to pieces — in a way that’s rousingly cathartic.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Glimmer Returns with Bruising Yet Anthemic “Been Down”

Over the past couple of years New York-based grungegaze outfit and JOVM mainstays Glimmer — Jeff Moore (vocals, guitar), Jaye Moore (drums), Johnny Nicholls (guitar) and Kevin Dobbins (bass) — have released a handful of well-received singles have seen the quartet firmly establishing a sound that mixes elements of shoegaze, grunge and dream pop in a way that’s both nostalgia inducing and yet contemporary.

Building upon a growing profile, the band’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, Get Weak is slated for an October 3, 2025 vinyl release through Philadelphia-based label, Abandon Everything. Recorded with Jeff Berner at Brooklyn-based Studio G and mastered by Will Yip, Get Weak reportedly sees the band pairing their more pop-leaning singles with heavy-hitting alt-rock anthems and softer, more ethereal material

The album’s latest and last pre-release single “Been Down” features big, crunchy, Dinosaur Jr.-like riffs with even bigger, remarkably catchy The Colour and The Shape-era Foo Fighters-like hooks and forcefully propulsive drumming serving as a lush yet remarkably catchy bed for Jeff Moore’s dreamily plaintive delivery. “Been Down” showcases the band’s unerring knack for pairing big hooks and arena rock-like bombast with earnest, nostalgia-including lyricism. And while clearly drawing from 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock, the new single continues a run of material that manages to sound incredibly contemporary.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Windsor, ON’s Talking Violet Shares “120 Minutes”-era MTV like “In Your Mind”

Windsor, ON-based quartet Talking Violet — Jillian Goyeau (vocals, guitar), Jayden Turnbull (guitar, vocals), Jeremie Brosseau (drums) and Dylan Iannicello (bass) — have quickly developed and established a sound that sees the Canadian outfit seamlessly blending elements of shoegaze, grunge and dream pop into what they’ve dubbed “dreamo.” Thematically, their work touches upon how we wrestle with the grief of personal change — especially in personal experiences.

Talking Violet’s latest single, the Justin Meli-produced, Will Yip-mastered “In Your Mind” is a breezy, 120 Minutes-era MTV-like anthem anchored around swirling shoegazer-like guitars, thunderous drumming and enormous hooks and choruses serving as a lush bed for Goyeau’s yearning delivery. Seemingly channeling The Sundays and Tallies, “In Your Mind” manages to capture a very specific sense of helplessness of loving someone through pain and uncertainty and not knowing what to do — or if you can do anything.

“I’ve had to learn over time that no matter how much you want to help people, so often it’s really out of your hands,” Talking Violet’s Goyeau says. “They have to be the ones to figure things out, but you can do what you can from a supporting line.” Interestingly, the new single continues upon the emotional thread of their recently released sophomore album Everything At Once, continuing to draw from the grief and complications of interpersonal change ,. “These tracks draw on a lot of grief of change, most specifically, the grief of relationship changes in our lives,” Goyeau explains. “I was going through changes that I now see as necessary but were incredibly painful at the time. It made me realize how much I had depended on my relationships with others for my identity. I had to slowly relearn who I was—and spent the next few years healing my people-pleasing baseline. It’s still something I work on every day.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Glimmer Shares Rousingly Anthemic “Dissolve”

Over the past couple of years, New York-based grungegaze outfit Glimmer — Jeff Moore (vocals, guitar), Jaye Moore (drums), Johnny Nicholls (guitar) and Kevin Dobbins (bass) — have released a handful of well-received singles have seen the quartet firmly establishing a sound that mixes elements of shoegaze, grunge and dream pop in a way that’s both nostalgia inducing and yet contemporary.

Building upon a growing profile, the band’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, Get Weak is slated for an October 3, 2025 vinyl release through Philadelphia-based label, Abandon Everything. Recorded with Jeff Berner at Brooklyn-based Studio G and mastered by Will Yip, Get Weak reportedly sees the band pairing their more pop-leaning singles with heavy-hitting alt-rock anthems and softer, more ethereal material.

The album’s latest single “Dissolve” continues a remarkable run of material anchored around rousingly anthemic, The Colour and The Shape-era Foo Fighters-like hooks, reverb-soaked guitars and a dreamy coda. At its core, the song evokes a dreamy and aching nostalgia for past summers — for times and things that are gone and can’t be had again.

After returning from a European tour, the members of Glimmer will be embarking on a short run of Stateside tour dates. You can check out the tour dates below.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Austin’s Die Spitz Shares a Bruising, Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper

Rising Austin-based outfit Die Spitz — Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Ellie Livingston and Kate Halter — can trace some of their origins back to when Schrobilgen and Livingston met in preschool. They befriended Halter in middle school. And they brought De St. Aubin into their friend group when they started the band back in 2022.

Initially, the quartet was looking to find reasons to hang out more often, and decided they should start a band after a late-night viewing of the Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt. They settled on the name Die Spitz over a “brown bag of Fireball,” opting for the feminine German definite article in place of the English. “It reminds me of the Grim Reaper spitting,” Livingstone jokes.

Their first live shows saw them pairing originals with covers from some of their early inspirations including Black Sabbath, Pixies, Mudhoney, PJ Harvey and Nirvana. Unsurprisingly, they express their ideas and themselves through a shameless blend of classic punk, hardcore metal, alt rock and more. They’ve also become known for riotous live show, where dueling cartwheels, members climbing rafters and solos while crowdsurfing could happen at just about any moment.

The Texan quartet’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, the Will Yip-produced Something to Consume is slated for a September 12, 2025 release through Third Man Records. The album reportedly sees the members of Die Spitz combining their passion, friendship, identity and artistry to fight against the seemingly inescapable decay and chaos that surrounds modern life. “There’s a political side to it, but addiction and love can also be all-consuming,” the band’s Ellie Livingston says.

As the band trades off instruments, swapping songwriting and vocal duties, and generating powerful songwriting on concussive bursts, they have managed to create their own little pocket of the world, where we can all stand on the edge together.

Something to Consume‘s 11 tracks reportedly contains multitudes and yet feels like a singular epicene, an expansive and expressive collection, unified in its camaraderie and freedom. “We depend on our freedom — freedom to do what we want, present the ideas we want, make the music we want,” Livingston says. “Whether it’s based in metal or something soft, no matter which of us wrote the song, we all contribute and work together. As a person, I don’t have a strong ego or voice, but within this band each one of us is capable of so much more.”

“Something to Consume is an album experience for everyone. Whether you’re craving a smack of lively metal or a melancholy wave of grungey violin, there’s a piece of all of us injected. Something to Consume is a call to the multitudes of ways we as humans allow consumption to enrapture our culture as well as ourselves.”

Though they’ve only been playing together for a few years, the album also shows a maturity and technical prowess wielded and wed to the service of their deep and abiding friendship — and a hope to inspire change. “Some people aren’t interested in being political activists via music, but it weighs on me heavily and I feel misaligned with my calling if I don’t,” Chloe De St. Aubin says. “The four of us are free spirits with multiple interests, and there’s no limit or power dynamic that can derail us.”

Something to Consume‘s first single, “Throw Yourself to the Sword” is a bruising, most pit friendly synthesis of Slayer and long-haired Metallica era thrash metal, The Sword-like stoner rock and punk anchored around some of the hardest and grimiest riffs I’ve heard in some time paired with punchily delivered verses and feral howls for the song’s hooks and choruses. Play loud and open up that fucking pit — right now!

“‘Throw Yourself to the Sword’ is a high-energy ode to what we want young people to feel. There’s a lot of existentialism and despair in other songs on the album that still sheath the same theme, but ‘Throw Yourself to the Sword’ is the raise of optimism. Despite living in a state of mundanity or hopelessness, you can still rise up and fight the unknown, as long as you’re willing to throw yourself to it,” Ellie Livingston explains.

Fittingly, the accompanying video directed by Emily Sanchez is set in and around a local laundromat, supermarket and farm with young women playing “Throw Yourself to the Sword,” as the band’s frontperson appears and inspires them to be mischievous and joyful as a form of resistance and when necessary to pick up the sword and fight.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Mannequin Pussy Releases a Feral Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper

That same month, the band had thirteen songs released on a split tour cassette with Idaho-based band Art Fad titled Banditos, released through Trash Palace Tapes. The band expanded to a trio with the addition of Drew Adler (drums) — and as a result, Paul moved to guitar. With that lineup, the band released their full-length debut, 2013’s Gypsy Pervert as a limited edition, cassette only released through Rarebit Records.

In 2014 the members of Mannequin Pussy signed to Tiny Engines, who re-released their full-length debut. Over the next two years, the band went through a series of lineup changes: 2015 saw Reading replace Adler on drums and in the following year Regisford returned to the band. The lineup of Missy, Reading and Regisford and Paul released their critically applauded, breakthrough album Romantic, which featured “Romantic,” a trace that landed on Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Songs of 2016 list.

In March 2019, the band signed with Epitaph Records, who released their third album Patience that June. Much like a handful of bands across the world, last year was looking up for the members of the band: they had started touring to support Patience — and after a decade as a band, they were finally able to turn music into a full-time job. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic threw a massive monkey wrench into everyone’s plans, making touring, let alone playing anywhere impossible and dangerous. The band announced that Athanasios Paul had left the band to “start a new chapter in his life” and that they would continue forward as a trio.

After spending much of last year in anxious, pandemic-related isolation, the remaining members decided to reconvene and book studio time with Grammy-nominated producer Will Yip to work in person. They brought two previously written songs into the sessions, but they were so excited from their reunion, that they decided to write new material together on the fly. “We just figured if we forced ourselves into this situation where someone could hit ‘record,’ something might come out,” Missy says. “We’d never written that way before.” The end result is the band’s forthcoming EP Perfect.

Inspired by months of social isolation and anxiety-fueled doom scrolling, the EP and its title track in particular, thematically examines the practice of condensing your daily life into a manicured stream of images for social media consumption. “Last year, I found myself spending more time on my phone than I ever had in my life. Physically separate from other people, I spent hours of time watching other humans perform on my rectangle. I realized that through years of social media training, many of us have grown this deep desire to manicure our lives to look as perfect, as aspirational as possible,” the band’s frontwoman Missy explains in press notes. ““We want to put ourselves out there, share our lives, our stories, our day to day – and these images and videos all shout the same thing: ‘Please look at me, please tell me I’m so perfect.’ It’s simultaneously a declaration of our confidence but edged with the desperation that seeks validation from others.”

Clocking in at a little over 2:30, “Perfect” is a hardcore punk-inspired, feral bludgeoning, centered around thunderous drumming, howled vocals and explosive power chords and a mosh pit friendly break. Play this one loud. Play it so loud that it frightens your neighbor.

Directed by the band’s Missy, the recently released video for “Perfect” is inspired by the 1997 cult comedy Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. Taking viewers to Sugarbush High’s 10-year anniversary, the video reveals the rot, unease and freakishness under the veneer of perfection. The freaks who uproot everything are the heroes and the norms are awful — and that’s generally the case, isn’t it?