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Apr 21, 2025 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Corey Eyres

Next month, Exeter-based indie trio Soot Sprite are set to share their full-length debut album, Wield Your Hope Like a Weapon. The band first began as a lo-fi bedroom pop project for singer/songwriter Elise Cook. However, their music has since expanded in scope and ambition with the addition of bassist Sean Mariner and drummer Sam Cother, moving towards a more densely layered sound tinged with roiling shoegaze textures.

As Cook explains, “When I started Soot Sprite I was hooked on Clean by Soccer Mommy and Hovvdy’s Cranberry but with this record I was listening to a lot of Sweet Pill’s catalogue, Ovlov, and Wednesday.”

The band debuted in 2018 with their EP, Comfort in Concrete, followed by another pair of EPs in 2019 and 2021, Sharp Tongue and Poltergeists. Earlier this year, they returned with a pair of new singles from the album, “All My Friends Are Depressed” and “Days After Days,” and today they’re back with their latest single, “Vicious Cycles,” premiering early with Under the Radar.

“Vicious Cycles” builds upon the noisy and fuzzed-out edge of the band’s latest singles, but rather than running straight into walls of layered distortion, the band gives the track space to simmer and sprawl. Cook’s vocals take center stage initially, backed by echoing lead guitar lines and a turbulent rhythm section swirling beneath. However, later Cook’s vocals fade back while the band truly lets loose, crashing full force into a roaring finale steeped equally in chaos and catharsis. Cooks lyrics similarly capture this tense, unbridled conflict, putting words to the spiraling anxieties in her head: “And I’ve been stuck in vicious cycles / Nothing in this world can stifle / Spinning in the thoughts around me / Dizzy with this spite for myself / I can’t seem to navigate this hell.”

Cook says of the track, “The single is about addressing your patterns of behaviour and the damage done in previous relationships. The fear of retribution for the smallest of hiccups that sticks with you long after the impacting relationship is done ‘Can’t wash off the oil from your spill.’ The thought that you’ll never fully shake it off.”

Check out the song early below. Wield Your Hope Like a Weapon is out May 16th via Specialist Subject.