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May 14, 2025 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Angelo Ross

Ceylon Sailor is a rising Brooklyn-based outfit making a ramshackle style of indie rock lined with sharp hooks and scrappy production. They intentionally try to evoke lo-fi and organic aesthetics, down to their choice to use all analog instruments. As they note, the band uses no drum edits, and only acoustic guitars run through loads of distortion. The result is a sound that thrives on imperfections. “I live for 1990s indie rock—to me that is the only indie rock,” says the band’s vocalist and guitarist KM Sigel. “I wanted to do something that has that 1990s organic sound. Something that feels alive with recorded moments that are maybe a bit messy.”

The band debuted last year with their EP, Cambridge Streets, and have shared a handful of new singles earlier this year. Today, they’re back with news of their first full-length album, Here We Lie, due out on June 27th. Accompanying the announcement, they are also sharing the record’s lead single, “Nowhere In Your Eyes,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Nowhere In Your Eyes” careens forward, driven by galloping percussion and driving basslines. The supercharged rhythm section and chugging acoustic chords blend together into a blur of propulsive energy, burnished by horns and distorted production. On the chorus, all of the track’s free-wheeling fire coalesces into a dazzling hook, howled out with all of the passion Siegel can muster. Siegel lists Neutral Milk Hotel as an inspiration and it is easy to hear how the band could be a touchstone for a track like “Nowhere In Your Eyes.” Not only does do the band blur their indie rock and folk stylings with lo-fi-tinged instrumentation and boundless energy, but they also deliver their lyrics with utter sincerity and unabashed romantic zeal. Sigel opens the track in typically lovelorn fashion, confessing “I could have lived / In the air you left behind / Crumbs you cast aside / Soft words you couldn’t find.”

Siegal says of the track, “Our new single ‘Nowhere In Your Eyes’ is a story of longing and brief connection followed by more unresolved longing. Totally innovative, I know. Mentally, I had set it in Savannah, Georgia, after having traveled there and recently read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil— I wanted to call out to that southern gothic story full of strange and interesting characters, albeit in under 150 words. There’s some offhand references (‘we drank the river’s charms,’ ‘wandered down tangles of vines’) but no explicit mention of Savannah though - but ‘Nowhere In Your Eyes’ is intended to be an old story, and it calls out a climactic encounter between the narrator and their object of longing in 1979 (‘I caught your flame, one night in ‘79’). It’s loosely based on a personal episode from a few years ago (actually while visiting Savannah, appropriately) but it seemed much more sepia-toned/timeless to put it in the 70s. I often drag the band over to watch 70s movies, it’s a recent personal obsession. In the end, though, ‘Nowhere In Your Eyes’ is basically boy remembers pining for girl, boy remembers missed connections with girl in late 70s in Savannah, and then has one brief night of connection but ultimately was ‘nowhere in (her) eyes’—the repeating chorus. In the final verse, the boy fast forwards to adulthood and the separate paths the two characters have taken.”

Check out the song and video below. Here We Lie is out on June 27th via indie label Stunning Models.