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Sep 12, 2024 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Charlie Knepper

Cumgirl8 are a rising New York-based band making a warped and hyper-digitized genre blend that touches on post punk, goth rock, shoegaze, and dance punk. Although they’ll say the band formed after meeting in a sex chat 8000 years ago, they first debuted with a self-titled EP in 2020, before following with their 2021 EP, RIPcumgirl8 and their first EP with 4AD, 2023’s phantasea pharm.

Along the way, they began cementing their chaotic, sex-positive, unabashedly political, and hyper-online presentation. That cyberfeminist philosophy is also at the center of their upcoming debut album, the 8th cumming. They’ve described the record as a “Greta Thunberg fever dream,” a tour through the online and offline relationships between humanity and technology, all mediated by the band’s feminist and surrealist themes. The band announced the record with the lead single, “Karma Police,” and today they’re back with another new track, “ahhhh!hhhh! (I don’t wanna go),” premiering with Under the Radar.

The band’s latest track finds them taking on a bleary electroclash sheen, carried by bubbling retro synth textures, seductive basslines, and scratchy guitar tones. The track retains the band’s digital outré aesthetics, but it also proves hypnotizing and danceable, pulling the listener in rather than buffeting them with nervy guitar lines like on “Karma Police.” After a whispered spoken-word bridge, the snare hits and cowbell drive the track into it’s final moments, letting it descend into a blur of discordant melodies and insistent rhythms. Meanwhile, the band’s lyrics capture a similar feeling of prickly overstimulation: “Come in for the kill / And why not there’s tea to spill / So many faces but so alone / Just wanna be on our own at home.”

Along with the single, the band have also shared an accompanying video, directed by Leah Hennessey. Hennessey says of the video, “We shot the video at 93 Canal, this experimental live streaming studio in Chinatown, which is carrying on the tradition of public access/pirate broadcasting downtown. The fictional show ‘Feminist or Feminot’ is hosted by the AI Hologram of The Collective Unconscious Perception of Second Wave Feminist Philosopher Susan Sontag (played by me and actress Roberta Colindrez), who is grilling the band about their particular brand of surrealist sex positive feminism. The conversation seems to splinter hologram Sontag into two, and when she encounters her double in the heart of Dimes Square, she’s forced to confront the erotic consequences of a level narcissism only made manifest with the help of AI.”

Check out the song and video below. Stream the track here. The 8th Cumming is out October 4th via 4AD. Pre-order it here.