This Friday, Katzin will release his debut LP Buckaroo on Mexican Summer. The project of the New York based songwriter Zion Battle, who is just 20 years old, Katzin broke ground on his first album the summer after he graduated from high school.
Raised on skillful storytellers like Bruce Springsteen and Tracy Chapman, Battle started weaving narratives from his first year of adulthood into a collection of new music. Channelling the expansive gravitas of Springsteen’s Nebraska, while drawing from the warm, homespun atmospherics of early Orchid Tapes releases, the record incorporates symbols of the mythologized American West – cowboys, horses, vast deserts, rolling plains, ancient rock formations – to trace Battle’s leap out of adolescence in all its unsteady shine.
Katzin has so far shared three singles from the record “Anna,” “Wild Horses,” and “Nantucket,” and today he’s sharing a final single from the record, a track called “Cowboy.”
When Battle began work on Buckaroo, with collaborator and producer Max Morgen, he had just spent most of the summer in Europe, and came back to the United States inspired to explore what it means to be an American at this particular moment in history. As with several other tracks on the record, “Cowboy” is a song that spills out into questions of identity and belonging in a nation that might still be too young to know what it wants to be.
The track was born in Max Morgen’s kitchen during an especially fruitful songwriting session. “We had about six or seven tunes for the album already, and we wanted a standout, shiny, loud song,” says Zion Battle, aka Katzin. “So we sat down and wrote ‘Cowboy’ together. It felt like we were really in lockstep. It just came out so seamlessly. The kick drum on that song is actually the sound of my boots banging on the wooden deck in his backyard.” A standout on Buckaroo, “Cowboy” thunders with the quiet/loud dynamics of peak indie rock like Pavement and Pixies, arcing into its crescendo with the confidence and velocity of a Mustang hurtling down the interstate.
To mark the release of the record Katzin has announced a hometown release show at Nightclub 101 that will take place on March 11th.
Dead Pioneers,the Indigenous fronted band from Denver, thump back into action this week with one of their most enraged, powerful and important pieces of work yet.As the upsurge of the far right and white supremacists continues to rise and come out of hiding, Dead Pioneers are ready to fight back with new single ‘Nazi Teeth’, the first track to be lifted from their forthcoming third album, further details to follow…
“While unfortunate that it needs to be done, we’ll never shy away from calling out the elephant in the room,” states frontman Gregg Deal. “Although we didn’t expect this elephant to be the revival of fascists on Amerikkkan soil. Maybe we should have. Frustrated and angry, ready and willing to fight, it’s not lost on us that the need to write a song like this or say these words out loud is grim, ironic, and disconcerting. Nevertheless, here we are, and we’re here to do it.”
The single features a fiery vocal collaboration from Stephanie Byrne of Colorado feminist punk band Cheap Perfume, reconnecting with their fantastic 2016 song ‘It’s Okay To Punch Nazis’. Stephanie’s voice breaks through the song, doubling down on confronting white supremacists throughout the world.
“We are witnessing in real time the violent and horrifying overextension of this administration, while many of our brothers and sisters have been suffering at the hands of white supremacy and colonialism for generations,” says Stephanie. “Nazi teeth is a call to action to hold the line with your friends, family, and community. Keeping Nazis down keeps us all free.”
“The United States of Amerikkka is in disarray, and ‘Nazi Teeth’ is not just our answer to what we’re seeing and experiencing in the streets of the so-called land of the free, but a call to action, fighting the continuing manifestation of forces our grandparents and great grandparents fought some 81-plus years ago,” continues Gregg. “It should be obvious, but for some people it seems this needs spelling out: Fuck Nazis, Fuck Fascism, Fuck ICE, Fuck Pedos, and Fuck Trump and his administration. If violence is the only language they speak, it’s okay to punch Nazi teeth.”
Dead Pioneers have never been afraid to use their art as a vehicle to express their beliefs and anger at the current political landscape in America. Over two albums – their self-titled debut in 2023 and PO$T AMERICAN from last year, the band have concocted a unique blend of spoken word and hypnotic post-punk, mixed with the fury and anger of real punk rock.
Order ‘Nazi Teeth’ here. Dead Pioneers are confirmed to play their first EU and UK headline tour, starting later this month. Order your tickets here.
Dead Pioneers emerged as a dynamic extension of vocalist Gregg Deal’s performance art, seamlessly blending music with critical cultural commentary. Rooted in the same themes of identity and resistance that define his visual work, the band’s sound acts as a powerful platform for addressing the complexities of Indigenous experience. Deal harnesses the raw energy of post-punk and alternative influences to challenge prevailing narratives, using lyrics that provoke thought and evoke emotion. Just as his performance art confronts the legacies of colonization and systemic marginalization, Dead Pioneers – completed by Josh Rivera and Abe Brennan on guitars, bassist Lee Tesche (Algiers) and drummer Shane Zweygardt – engages audiences in a visceral dialogue about survival, resilience, and reclamation of voice. This musical endeavor not only amplifies his artistic vision but also creates a space for collective expression and solidarity, inviting listeners to reflect on the intersections of culture, history, and identity in a contemporary context. Through Dead Pioneers, Deal continues to assert that art, in all its forms, can be a powerful vehicle for activism and change.
Seattle’s The Darts return with “Apocalypse,” the second advance single from their upcoming LP Halloween Love Songs, arriving March 3. Where “Midnight Creep” danced in B-movie shadows, “Apocalypse” blows the door off the darker half of the album, leaning into caveman rhythms, volcanic fuzz, and the kind of apocalyptic joy that makes destruction sound like deliverance. It marks the moment the record shifts from spooky fun into full-throttle, after-midnight fire.
The song was born in Angers, France, when singer/organ conjurer Nicole Laurenne wandered through the massive medieval Apocalypse Tapestry, a wall of woven chaos, angels, beasts, storms, the whole cosmic meltdown. “The lightning bolt struck me,” she says. “The song practically wrote itself in the van as we left the castle.” Instead of doom, Nicole leaned into the strange liberation of burning it all down: freedom from suffering, freedom from crowns, freedom from being told what comes next. She wrote the line “no future, no kings” as a mantra of release — and a year later, as if the song had cracked something open, “No Kings” erupted as a protest chant across the U.S. All while the track existed only as a demo on her laptop.
Musically, “Apocalypse” hits like a ritual. A pounding, Neanderthal beat through the verses, wide-open chant on the chorus, and those snaking organ lines that nod straight to The Seeds, The Standells, and other 60s greats who knew how to make the end of the world sound like a block-party with broken amps. Rebecca Davidson’s guitar tone drags the song into modern grit with thick, grimy Mudhoney fuzz, a little L7 bite, and flashes of Bikini Kill’s unbottled anger. It’s garage rock with a cracked halo, stomped through the dirt and set on fire.
Long before the album was finished, the band slipped “Apocalypse” into their live sets, and the audience reaction was immediate. People were yelling for it after shows, asking where they could buy it, treating it like a lost classic. When the studio version was finally tracked, Gretsch Guitars tapped the instrumental for a major ad, with Lindsay Scarey and Rebecca featured front and center. A quiet demo had somehow become one of the band’s most in-demand songs before it ever saw daylight.
Recorded at Station House Studio in Los Angeles with Grammy-winning producer Mark Rains, “Apocalypse” is the bridge into Halloween Love Songs’ after-midnight terrain: heavier, darker, louder, and built to shake rooms. It’s the sound of a band deep into its evolution with Nicole, Becca, Lindsay, and returning drummer Rikki Watson, pushing garage rock to its breaking point and finding something feral and euphoric on the other side. No future, no kings — just volume.
mclusky release i sure am getting sick of this bowling alley, a six-song mini album featuring four new tracks as well as two songs previously available digitally only, on march 20 (digital)/may 1 (vinyl) via Ipecac Recordings.
Available now for pre-order (https://mclusky.lnk.to/bowling), the collection is available physically on black vinyl, translucent red vinyl (exclusive to the ipecac and band websites), and a rough trade exclusive variant on crystal fuchsia.
The release follows the 2025 album, the world is still here and so are we, the UK outfit’s first new album in over 20 years. It debuted in the top 20 on the rock, alternative, and independent sales charts. NPR said it “is just bursting with creativity,” Pitchfork called it a “reminder of what mclusky are still capable of… melting faces,” and Brooklyn Vegan said the three-piece are “as sneering and sarcastic as ever.”
Falco: “Content. It drives the modern music world. Photos. Opinions. More photos. More opinions (please note – not all photo and are options are bad, just 99 percent of them). How about – and indulge me here – music? That content-y enough for you? Fact is we can’t stop writing, at least at the moment. It’s fun (that’s all it needs to be). It’s the common denominator of band. Only death will slow us down (note – it won’t stop us).
The idea for this release starts as a bit of a stop-gap – a thing with which to help promote the north american tour – and ended up as something else entirely. ‘i know computer’ and ‘as a dad’ are new and are singles (they may make the next album, who can say, it’s already half-recorded and you will like it). Damien probably likes ‘I am computer’ a bit too much but that’s okay, the heart wants what the heart wants.
‘spock culture’ and ‘hi! we’re on strike’ were recorded during the the world is still here… why didn’t they make the album? I’m not sure. Lyrically they are important historical documents. Up there with the ‘pusheen the cat’ books and/or the u.s. constitution.
‘fan learning difficulties’ and ‘that was my brain on elves’ have only had a digital release before and are, to quote british children from forty years ago, ‘skill.’ Hopefully you can agree that iI, and by osmosis, all of us – have read a lot of books.”
mclusky North American tour dates:
March 24 Denver, CO Marquis Theater
March 26 Seattle, WA The Crocodile
March 27 Boise, ID Treefort Festival
March 28 Portland, OR Aladdin Theater
March 30 San Francisco, CA The Chapel
March 31 Los Angeles, CA The Regent Theater
April 2 Austin, TX Empire Control Room & Garage
April 3 Minneapolis, MN Fine Line
April 4 Chicago, IL Metro
April 6 Toronto, ON Mod Club
April 10 Philadelphia, PA Underground Arts
April 11 Washington, DC Black Cat
Keep your mind open.
[I know you’ll use your computer to subscribe today.]
Greg Loiacono & Stingray have released “Nothing Can Come Between Us,” a reimagining of the classic Sade song. Over the last two years, the Bay Area–based collective has been steadily building a following throughout Northern California, fine-tuning a retro soul sound that makes reinterpreting Sade a natural extension of their musical identity. A lone conga opens the track before the band falls into a magnetic groove, setting the stage for Loiacono’s falsetto vocal, which delivers the song’s themes of faith and trust with a palpable conviction. “I’ve been in love with Sade since hearing her for the first time as a kid in the backseat of my mom’s Chrysler Cordoba,” says Loiacono. “Something about hearing her voice and the band moved me deeply then and still does today. So when our drummer Michael Urbano brought ‘Nothing Can Come Between Us’ to the table as a cover for Stingray, I was delighted.” Urbano adds: “When we first tried playing ‘Nothing Can Come Between Us,’ I jumped into the same groove and tempo from Sade’s recording. The band’s percussionist Vicki Randle immediately stopped and said, ‘Don’t play it like that, do something different.’ So I slowed it down, went quarter notes on the hat, and swung the kick feel. She smiled and said, ‘There ya go.’ Once she jumped in on congas over that beat, it felt like we had our own thing goin’ for the song. Greg’s falsetto performance, run through producer Damien Lewis’ tripped-out effect, is its own thing as well. I love playing this song live; it’s like casting a spell that slowly gets a hold of the crowd. It’s not immediate. It’s one of those things that brings them to us, rather than us going to them.””Nothing Can Come Between Us” is the third single released by Greg Loiacono & Stingray from sessions produced by Damien Lewis at 2200 Studios in Sausalito, CA. The first two tracks, “Hope We Get To Dance” and “Come Back Home,” were released in 2025 via RPF Records / Royal Potato Family. Stingray is led by vocalist/guitarist Greg Loiacono, who is also a founding member of the legendary San Francisco rock band The Mother Hips. He’s joined by drummer Michael Urbano, percussionist/vocalist Vicki Randle, bassist/vocalist Kofy Brown, keyboardist Danny Eisenberg, and guitarist Tom Ayres. The six-piece is currently headlining shows throughout California.
Upcoming Shows: 3/21 – Templeton, CA – Club Car Bar 5/17 – Big Sur, CA – Hipnic XVII 6/20 – San Luis Obispo, CA – Live Oak Music Festival
Keep your mind open.
[Nothing can come between you and the subscription box.]
ADULT. is not cooperating. For over 25 years, the dystopian Detroit synth-punk institution founded by Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller has embodied steadfast frustration, distrust, and apprehension. One might expect the edges to soften with time, but ADULT. is not interested in the comforts of legacy. The duo’s music has never sounded as visceral, urgent, and downright angry as it does on the culminating, uncompromising Kissing Luck Goodbye, their scorched-earth 10th LP and fourth with Dais Records.
Built with upgraded gear and a whole new library of sounds, the material is crushingly dynamic, louder yet clearer, with Kuperus’ commanding delivery given greater prominence in the mix, outlining an arsenal of vivid, caustic calls, chants, and musings. Laughter, whether in the lyrics or as a possessed presence, serves as a leitmotif that speaks to the menacing absurdity of modern times.
“No One is Coming”, the album’s lead single is a poignant, bassline-driven industrial anthem that turns feedback into melody, the track attacks inaction in the face of fascism —
NO ONE IS COMING TO YOUR RESCUE… A lyric that was written in early 2025 and is even more relevant on its release date a year later. A song speaking to moral collapse and political corruption “to a T”. These subhumans attempting to run the show are more concerned with cashing in and political cosplay than the well being of mankind. While working on this album, I read an article from an esteemed environmental scientist about “what’s coming in the future”. What stuck with me was their point that we are entering a new phase in existence where the most important thing we can do is know our neighbors and know the strengths of each other and what resources everyone has. Who needs extra care? Who is on their own? This song was written as a call to arms. Be alert. Be aware. Be prepared. Stand up for yourself and look out for your community. We are better when we are united. Social media is wearing us down. Deluding us. The political landscape is horrifying, distracting, deranged and unhinged. We are seeing this go down in real time right now in Minneapolis… NO ONE IS COMING TO YOUR RESCUE… except ALL OF US! Keep speaking up! Keep using your right to protest and most importantly keep showing kindness to one another.
ADULT. is known for high-stakes catharsis on stage, and recently deployed their back catalog of bass guitar songs from the 2000s, retracing the prescient Anxiety Always era partially out of necessity given the temperature of today’s political and technological dread. The response was instant and palpable: “We were in Paris, and the kids were stage diving. And I was like, this is rad. This is kind of the energy I want to get back into,” Kuperus says. The epiphany coincided with a series of setbacks — Kuperus’ bouts with chronic vertigo, the loss of their close friend and collaborator Douglas McCarthy of Nitzer Ebb, whom the album is dedicated to — all made profoundly worse under the looming regime. “We were stuck in the mud for quite a while after the election,” Miller says. “We had all the concepts, but we would just be like, ‘What’s the point?’” With failing studio air conditioners and dead car batteries (their sacred space for listening back to recordings), they often joked that the album might be cursed. Kuperus adds, “We’re just like everything’s breaking. We’re breaking. We’re broken.”
The sentiment didn’t stick, however, as they found themselves ultimately too super-charged by fury to sit still. From watching Musk’s disgusting nazi salute to seeing their community struggle under the new regime to waiting months for a tariff-inflated replacement subwoofer, the vibe heading into Kissing Luck Goodbye was four middle fingers pointed straight up.
Rather than retreat, ADULT. focused on the process, revisiting their setup, complete with their first new mics in 20 years. They obsessed over textures, amassing a massive sample library taken from old thrift-store albums, previously used and unused ADULT. ingredients and new field recordings, running myriad items, including the buzz of shop vacs, through various pedals. Pause Kissing Luck Goodbye at any moment, and you’re likely to count a dozen things happening at once in strange, dizzying, and dissonant harmony. Together with producer Nolan Gray, whose involvement resulted from a chance encounter (he happened to be the host of the short-term rental property where the two stayed — maybe there is still some luck, after all), the band pushed themselves harder than ever before to build a world with this record.
Songs took shape from unusual places: “No One Is Coming” got its tempo from a skipping record they captured through a cell phone during a bnb stay for Kuperus’ 50th birthday. “None of It’s Fun” blitzes with breathless urgency, high-speed glissades, and pointed lines like “OH I AM TEARING MY GUTS OUT / LOOK AT ME…DO YOU THINK THAT THIS IS AMUSING?” The closer, “Destroyers”, was the last song they recorded and encompasses the techniques that ADULT. has learned not just throughout the making of Kissing Luck Goodbye, but across their quarter-century as a pioneering collaborative project.
ADULT. Live Dates:
Apr 10: Pittsburgh, PA – Spirit Lodge Apr 11: Baltimore, MD – Ottobar Apr 12: Brooklyn, NY – Good Room Apr 14: Raleigh, NC – Kings Apr 15: Atlanta, GA – The Earl Apr 16: Jacksonville, FL – Jack Rabbits Apr 17: Orlando, FL – The Social Apr 18: Miami, FL – TBD Apr 21: New Orleans, LA – Gasa Gasa Apr 22: Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall (Upstairs) Apr 23: Austin, TX – 29th Street Ballroom Apr 24: San Antonio, TX – Paper Tiger Apr 25: Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves Apr 28: Albuquerque, NM – Sister Apr 29: Phoenix, AZ – Rebel Lounge Apr 30: San Diego, CA – The Casbah May 01: Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Forever (Masonic Lodge) May 02: San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop May 04: Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios May 05: Seattle, WA – Barboza May 08: Minneapolis, MN – 7th St. Entry May 09: Cudahy, WI – X-Ray Arcade
Miss Grit—the New York-based, Korean-American musician Margaret Sohn (they/she)—announces their new album, Under My Umbrella, will be released April 24th via Mute, and shares the magnetic new single, “Stranger.” Sohn is a bold experimentalist and architect of sculptural texture, known for deftly moving between analogue and digital, guitar and synths, and creating an immersive cosmos of sound with futuristic frameworks for their searching introspection. For their second full-length album, they’ve lifted the lid on their internal world, lasering in on the anxieties and heartbreak of the past two years. It’s an album that is as immersive and expansive as it is intimate, channeling the noirish atmosphere of classic trip-hop bands, while adding a hefty dose of maximalism and a dream-pop sensibility.
Last year, Miss Grit released a preview of Under My Umbrella with “Tourist Mind.” It was the first taste of new music since Miss Grit’s debut, 2023’s Follow The Cyborg, a concept album in which they built a fluid future beyond the gender and genre binaries, where a non-human machine goes in pursuit of liberation. They were recognized by i-D as a “singular talent” for their “compelling ideas and freewheeling creativity” and by Rolling Stone for their “elliptical, hooky songs that take unexpected turns.” Surrounding its release, Miss Grit was named an “Artist to Watch” by Brooklyn Vegan, a “Breaking” artist by FLOOD, profiled by Rolling Stone as an “Artist You Need To Know,” and beyond. Additionally, they performed for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s LateShowMeMusic series, and toured supporting Nation of Language, Bartees Strange and The Last Dinner Party.
Under My Umbrella began to take shape when Sohn returned from an intense touring schedule where they’d driven themself around North America totally alone. When they returned home, Sohn found themselves yearning to capture that specific, less restrained energy of playing live. Like Follow The Cyborg, its creation mostly took place in Sohn’s Queens apartment. The music came to them quickly, streams of consciousness with one new guiding principle: don’t overthink it. “I tried not to edit too much or force a moment to happen,” they explain, leaning into big choruses where it felt right. Some guitar sounds were first takes, ditto vocals, thus preserving the immediacy and authenticity of the emotion. As such, it’s a densely layered album, charged with electric crescendos that build to moments of unbridled catharsis. “It feels truer to myself, and more of a representation of what is actually coming out of me,” says Sohn.
With its all-engulfing chorus about trying to out-run feeling betrayed, new single “Stranger” is Sohn’s most ambitious song yet. Ethereal and intense, its gritty breakbeat backbone and sparkly synths give way to emphatic industrial-pop. With this track, Sohn’s long-time mix engineer, Aron Kobayashi Ritch of Momma, stepped up to co-produce. “Usually collaboration is a little bit hard for me – there has to be a deeper connection there,” says Sohn. “But really trusting the people I was working with to put their fingerprint on the music, and them also being close friends, was liberating.” Other collaborators include friends from New York City and Los Angeles: electronic visionary and film scorer Sae Heum Han (mmph), bassist Margaux Bouchegnies (Margaux), singer Eva Liu (Mui Zyu), producer Luciano Rossi (Mui Zyu), drummer Preston Fulks (Momma) and violinist Zachary Mezzo (Catcher).
Watch the Visualizer for “Stranger” Under My Umbrella not only presents Sohn’s gift for complex production, but also the boldness of finding your voice. Many of the songs speak to the idea of trying to wrestle free–of expectations, of being caught up in other people and losing yourself, and of the social anxiety that comes with being overwhelmed by others. “Before, I was really timid about what I said and didn’t say, and that all ended up being molded into something that didn’t feel as relatable to me as it once did,” comments Sohn. “Part of it is due to honoring my feelings and trying to be more honest in my writing. I feel a deep connection to this record that I haven’t felt about my music until now.”
Under My Umbrella will be available digitally and on limited-edition crystal clear vinyl and CD. Miss Grit will play record release shows in NYC on Friday, April 24th at Nightclub 101 and Los Angeles on Saturday, May 2nd at Scribble. Prior, Sohn will appear at Rough Trade in NYC for an acoustic set and signing with free entry along with a pre-order of the album. Fans can RSVP here.
Miss Grit Tour Dates: Sat. Feb. 7 – Los Angeles, CA @ Banned From Eden Fri. April 24 – New York, NY @ Nightclub 101 Sat. May 2 – Los Angeles, CA @ Scribble
La Peste were Boston’s first true punk band. The band were born as a group of art students who had never played instruments and over a few short years became a foundational influence for a Boston music scene that would go on to produce some of the most important and boundary-pushing American bands of the ’80s. They played with the Ramones, worked with The Cars’ Ric Ocasek and earned the attention of the legendary BBC DJ John Peel all while releasing only one single (1978’s “Better Off Dead”), which gradually accumulated a reputation as a punk classic, as did the various live and other unofficial recordings that circulated as bootlegs over the years.
In 1996, Matador released a single-disc La Peste collection, primarily of live recordings and with a few studio cuts mixed in, which introduced the band to a new generation of fans but has now been out of print for decades. At the end of 2025, Wharf Cat Records announced the release of a new compilation entitled I Don’t Know Right From Wrong: Lost La Peste 1976-1979 Vol. 1that aims to tell the full story of La Peste.
This box set focuses on the band’s prodigious unreleased studio work, collecting tracks from the “Better off Dead” sessions, demos produced by Ric Ocasek of the Cars, a 1979 session at Electro Acoustic Studios, and 4-track recordings made at the band’s loft. The first disc imagines the mythical full-length the band never made, and the second, equally worth hearing, is more diffusely assorted. Finally, I Don’t Know Right From Wrong gives La Peste the sort of presentation they deserve: not just as Boston’s first punk group, but a band that remains singularly thrilling today.
While bootlegs of many of the tracks on the compilation have circulated in various forms, today the band are sharing a never before released track called “Acid Test” that comes from the sessions with Ocasek. The track is accompanied by a video that pairs live footage shot by Jan Crocker and the MIT film crew with the studio track.
La Peste’s Mark Karl says of the single:
Acid Test is two chord magic. Two meanings. A relentless bass line, angry guitar and pounding drums. Perfect arrangement for a trio. Peter’s lyrics were right on – most of us can relate to a relationship gone sour. Begins simply and then quickly builds in intensity. The live performance of this song always carried the crowd into a controlled frenzy.
arantisT is calling on artists, creators, and cultural voices around the world to stand with the Iranian people, to speak for those who have been silenced, and to help ensure that the suffering of an entire nation is seen, heard, and never ignored.
Iran is currently facing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. What began as peaceful civilian protests against the occupying terrorist regime has escalated into a nationwide massacre, with the regime deploying heavy and military-grade weapons into city streets and brutally killing more than 30,000 people, including children, women, elders, and unarmed civilians. Families are denied the return of their loved ones’ bodies or are extorted for outrageous sums, while reports describe piles of corpses and streets running with blood. In an attempt to conceal the scale of these crimes, the regime has imposed a total digital blackout—shutting down the internet and phone networks across the country—cutting off all communication between Iran and the outside world, and leaving the true depth of the atrocities unknown. Despite this, the Iranian people remain united, calling collectively for Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi and demanding an end to the regime’s occupation. Artists and musicians across Iran and the diaspora stand in solidarity with the people; among them, the Iranian rock band TarantisT, which continues to release protest music and material in support of the movement. Their latest release, “Freedom”, incorporates real footage from the current events in Iran, merged with digital technology, amplifying the voices of a nation silenced but unbroken.
Relentless and prolific, TarantisT will be releasing a new single next week titled
Formed in 2000 by a group of young underground metal heads, TarantisT originated in the basement alternative rock and heavy metal scenes in their native Tehran, Iran. Having to perform secretly but loudly often proved to be difficult, but after sparking a following via word of mouth in the underground, the band soon began to garner international recognition. Within just a few years, international media correspondents inspired by their story (including BBC, SKY, CNN, NPR, Metal Hammer and Kerrang) started visiting Tehran to meet and talk with TarantisT. These news reports and articles aided TarantisT in cultivating a worldwide following – motivating the band to relocate to the United States Los Angeles in 2008.
Iranian metal band TarantisT have been active with their social-political content and music during all these years, dropping tracks like “Revolution” in 2022. “This is not a protest, this is a Revolution”. TarantisT continues to march towards this Revolution with all Iranians seeking freedom and liberty for their country with the main slogan of “Women, Life, Freedom”.
Instagram, TikTok and some other social medias have put limitation and restrictions to TarantisT’s accounts due to posting images and footages of the protest, violence of the Islamic Republic authorities and due to the use of social-political hashtags.
Since their inception, TarantisT has been invited to play several festivals like SXSW, CMJ, Canadian Music Week and Intergalactic Fest. TarantisT quickly added to their touring repertoire, performing on the same stages as Metallica, Motörhead, Stone Temple Pilots, Muse, Cheap Trick, Voivod, Sum 41, My Ruin, Ben Harper and many more.
Today the voice and songwriter of Fear of Men, Jessica Weiss, announces details of her debut solo album under the moniker New German Cinema. Set for release on March 27th via Felte, her new album ‘Pain Will Polish Me’ is preceded today with lead single “My Mistake”, which features guest vocals from Merchandise’s Carson Cox.
Weiss carries lyrical precision and emotional intensity into the stormy dark-pop gems on her debut solo album. ‘Pain Will Polish Me’ has been five years in the making, stretched between London and LA, built from late-night files, long silences and the quiet persistence of trying to finish something beautiful. Produced with Alex DeGroot (Zola Jesus, Cate Le Bon), it feels both forensic and devotional, the product of someone who doesn’t rush catharsis. It presents both solitary and connective, as if built from long-distance transmissions between two dream states.
Weiss calls the album a meditation on pop and European art-house auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It tracks the ways intimacy and control fold into one another until it’s impossible to tell where one ends. The songs are about the parts of yourself that dissolve in love, and the small acts of violence that come with being known. They move through claustrophobic relationships, obsession, surrender, cycles of suffering that start to feel like devotion. The language is pop but the feeling is something stranger, colder, more interior.
The album’s lead track, online today, is “My Mistake” – a collaboration with Carson Cox of Merchandise, who comments “I was going to produce Fear of Men and instead we made something totally different I think. True collaboration which is my preferred way to work on music”. What began as an Italo disco experiment evolved into a goth club anthem, charged and restless. It captures the push and pull of Weiss’s themes – devotion as both destruction and release. Weiss has a knack for making pain feel both exquisite and familiar.
Speaking on the accompanying video, Weiss comments: “The video sets the emotional tone for the record, suspended between eroticism and nightmare. It draws on cropped mirror framing – a favourite device of Douglas Sirk used to explore themes of emotional and physical entrapment and characters’ inner psychological conflicts – moments of dissociation, and the television as a symbol of alienation, inspired by my perennial inspiration, RW Fassbinder.”
Video director Luke Bather adds: “Our initial starting point was, predictably, the New German Cinema movement. However, when we discussed the themes of the song in more depth, the video evolved into its own beast. Sex, death, repressed desire, and good old-fashioned Catholic Guilt all loom large in the video through a series of performance vignettes inspired by everything from the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder through to the paintings of Francis Bacon and everything in between. Adding to this, we have the spectre of Carson haunting the video as a ghostly analogue broadcast interspersed with archival footage of Berlin in the 1970s; an inescapable reminder of the past and a nod to the original New German Cinema movement.”
The songs on ‘Pain Will Polish Me’ move in shadow. Layers of synth, vocal and guitar fold over one another, drawing from the cinematic tension of Fassbinder’s New German Cinema and the quiet dissonance of modern Berlin, where Weiss recorded fragments of the record, drifting between places that carry uneasy ghosts. Between dinner conversations about the city’s buried history and the surreal comfort of its present, she found herself tracing the outlines of love and loss, identity and dissolution. “Germany’s history is everywhere but it’s unsaid,” she notes. “Fassbinder brought it into view. I wanted to approach the same sense of unease through sound.”
The album artwork picks up these themes, hovering between the everyday mundanity of a Fassbinder domestic scene, and something less recognisable, punctuated by surreal elements that move us into dreamscape, both familiar and disquieting. The shell and sea reference Botticelli’s Venus: a figure born from sea foam created when Uranus’s severed genitals fell into the ocean – an image of creation through destruction. The shell becomes her vessel of birth, representing transformation, protection and fertility – the bridge between divine creation and human life. Weiss extends this theme of renewal to the personal; her baby daughter’s babbles feature on the record.
Weiss has long been fascinated by the seam between pop and theory, art and feeling. While Fear of Men continue to work on their next record, this solo project opens up her own private language- a collection that feels at once personal and archival, haunted and alive. Between finishing a Masters in Early Modern Literature at Oxford, starting a PhD, moving countries and jobs many times, she’s been piecing together a body of work that sits somewhere between diary, research and séance.
It’s an album about losing yourself in order to see what’s left. A document of love as obsession, repetition, survival. A meditation on love as both mirror and undoing, crafted in fragments, then pieced together into something whole.
New German Cinema live dates: 28 February – London, UK @ Sebright Arms 15 April – Brighton, UK @ The Folklore Rooms
