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Nov 15, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Eric David Lough

Kissing Party are a Denver-based self-coined “slop pop” band, which they describe as a chaotic blend of dream pop, shoegaze, and beach goth. Over the past decade, the band have built up an extensive roster of albums in this vein, all while remaining thoroughly DIY, with their founder Gregg Dolan creating much of the band’s presentation and aesthetics himself. This includes their music, artwork, videos, and t-shirts. The band returned most recently with their 2019 album, Mom & Dad, and followed in 2020 with a deluxe edition of their 2010 release, The Hate Album.

The band have spent this year teasing their latest record, Graceless, out later this week on November 17th. Ahead of the album release, today they’re sharing an early listen to the record’s title track, along with an accompanying video, premiering with Under the Radar.

“Graceless” is both impressively catchy and charmingly loose. Dolan brings the track a bleary, washed-out sensibility, yet imbues those dreamy elements with a sense of tense, nervy energy. Dolan sings in a woozy, reverb-soaked croon while the instrumentation strikes a distinct contrast, driving forward with a propulsive rhythm section and wiry guitar lines. The combination of the two is intoxicating, capturing the track’s wistful themes in a burst of relentless energy and tightly wound hooks.

Dolan says of the track, “‘Graceless’ is about making bad decisions and realizing you’ve fucked things up too much to fix and just saying fuck it – throw it all away. The video for ‘Graceless’ is a prequel to our 2019 single, ‘A Little Star’.” By coincidence, Under the Radar also premiered “Little Star” as well back in 2019.

Check out the song and video below. Graceless the album is out everywhere this Friday, November 17th.