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Jul 28, 2021 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Ruben Alverado

Indie pop quarter Small Reactions have coined their music as “nerve pop,” filled with strained energy, and adventurous musical instincts. These instincts have pulled in a variety of different directions on each of their three albums, most recently incorporating post-punk, new wave, and surf rock into a jittery indie rock pastiche with their new record, New Age Soul. The band debuted the full record earlier this month and are now back with a video for the album’s title track, premiering with Under the Radar.

Opening with a spindly guitar riff and driving percussion, “New Age Soul” encapsulates the band’s musical approach, pulling together the driving angularity of Wire with the slacker surf riffing of Mac DeMarco and the effortless cool of The Strokes. All this is baked into dusty desert imagery straight out of a Sergio Leone film. As the band explains, “The idea for ‘New Age Soul’ came from Little Danny’s show on WFMU called ‘The Cool Blue Flame.’ He broadcasts from West Texas, so it conjured up all this desert imagery: cowboy ballads, low-key ghost ’60s garage pop.”

Meanwhile, the accompanying animated video explores different territory, instead diving into a一quite literal一fish out of water story. P.W. Shelton, the director and animator behind the video, says of the video: “It’s always tricky interpreting the art of others and ‘New Age Soul’ was no exception. I’d spoken to Small Reactions before about the possibility of working together, but the opportunity had never arisen — so I was thrilled when they asked me! I didn’t dive too deep into the meaning of the song, but rather took the song title itself and went from there. Meta layers, anthropomorphic fish and a running pun throughout, it was a fun video to make. Next time it’ll be all stop-motion.”

Check out the song and video below. New Age Soul is out now via SofaBurn Records.