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Jun 20, 2025 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Nicole Miller

New York-based band Channel Vessel makes a delightfully freaked-out and noisy style of shoegaze, forgoing the bleary lull of many of their contemporaries and instead drawing on the genre’s jagged, confrontational edges. The band was founded by vocalist and guitarist Mark Bennett in an art house basement, but has since expanded to a full band with the addition of Deirdre Loyall on guitar, Cara Moses on bass, and Leo Didkovsky on drums. The band describes their music as “victory anthems over themes of paradise lost,” offering an adventurous contrast of tones that encapsulates the band’s left-field approach.

Over the past year, the band have been polishing their style in the local DIY circuit, supporting artists like A Place to Bury Strangers, Her New Knife, and Marissa Nadler as they build on the momentum of their 2023 debut EP, Channel. Today, they’re back with a new single, “I LOOK GREAT ON THE CROSS,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“I LOOK GREAT ON THE CROSS” is a thundering introduction to the band, opening with a surprisingly catchy guitar line that quickly shifts into an avalanche of roiling guitar textures and machine gun blast beats. Bennett wails and howls out their vocals, buried deep in the mix as the band rages on, eventually building into a rapturous, searing climax. Yet, just at the song’s height, the band pulls back one last time, letting Bennett’s lyrics hang above the solitary guitar before the band comes rushing back in as they storm towards the song’s end. In these rare quiet moments, the band offers a caustic take at the apocalyptic way consumer culture has commodified all aspects of social life: “You were born to consume / In God’s image / Swiping plastic for the thrill / Leveled cities / Divine will.” The band manages to balance between melodicism, lyrical bite, and towering waves of noise, making for a track that feels mournful in one moment and triumphantly heavy in the next.

Bennett says of the track, “‘I LOOK GREAT ON THE CROSS’ is a sarcastic riff on our modern plight as people who participate in counterculture navigating the commodification of all aspects of life - including counterculture. We took the hallowed tone associated with the ‘values’ of the ruling class and used their own words to paint a more accurate picture of what’s really going on.”

“Everything is being bought and sold to us so rapidly now that there’s barely a chance for new artistic movements to develop before they’re categorized and optimized as the niche of the week,” they say. “Simultaneously, our ability to physically exist as a community in our own sovereign spaces has been crushed under the bottom line of relentless gentrification. Deirdre and I first met because of the Silent Barn & The Glove - DIY spaces we were staff/fixtures at, respectively. Leo and I crossed paths for the first time when an old band of his played in the basement of the house I shared with 35 other artists. None of these places exist anymore. It’s harder than it’s ever been to sustain oneself as an artist but at least it’s good lyrical fodder.”

Check out the song below, out everywhere now.