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Jun 17, 2026 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Dayne Allen

Portland, Oregon-based indie punk outfit The Summerlands originally formed in 2022 as a solo project for singer/songwriter Grant Simmons. Since then, the band has released their 2023 debut EP, Unnatural History, and their 2025 follow-up, Unnatural History II, while rounding out the line-up with a full quartet. The band’s debut LP, Bonfante Gardens Forever, is due out late next month and finds Simmons and company playing with a collage of indie and punk influences, occasionally dipping into power pop, folk, emo, and even hardcore.

Simmons says the record’s greatest influence was Titus Adronicus’ The Monitor and Mark Arax’s book, The Dreamt Land, which traces California’s complicated history with land and water. Spoken-word passages from the book play over the album while Simmons’ lyrics, imagery, and themes draw from his roots in his hometown of Santa Cruz, CA, backgrounding the album in the forces that abruptly changed the Northern Californian landscape: climate change, the ballooning tech industry, and gentrification.

The band shared the record’s lead single, “Sellwood Bridge Blues,” last month, and today they’re back with another new track, “Heart in the Stratosphere.”

“Sellwood Bridge Blues” unfurled itself slowly, letting the track ramp up before hitting on a stadium-sized guitar solo and galloping finale. It made you feel like you were racing down the open road by the song’s end. In contrast, the energy on “Heart in the Stratosphere” is steadier and more reflective, though still shaded in churning indie punk guitars and an unexpected mid-song pivot. Simmons sorts through tangled feelings and wistful memories, confessing that “I’m sick of nostalgia / I’m sick of the way it cheapens me.” The shift comes in the track’s second half as the howling gang vocals give way to a winding emo guitar line. As the band comes back in, the melodies turn echoing and indistinct, ending the track without easy resolution in a tense, textured space.

Simmons says of the track, “‘Heart in the Stratosphere’ is a song about nostalgia and the two sides of it. One is the fun from indulging in the comfortable past. The other is asking what we give up when we fetishize the past so much that we ignore the present. Sonically and visually, the song and video are meant to showcase these two aspects of nostalgia back to back.”

Check out the song and video below. Bonfante Gardens Forever is out everywhere on July 24th.