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Feb 20, 2024 By Caleb Campbell

Since their 2014 debut, London quartet USA Nails have built up a reputation for a bracing and scorching style of post hardcore and noise rock, releasing a prolific series of albums, the sixth of which arrived in 2022. Late next month, the band are back with their latest record, Feel Worse, their first for One Little Independent Records. Last year, they shared a pair of new singles from the album, “Feel Worse” and “On Computer Screen,” and they returned last month with another new track, “Cathartic Entertainment.” Today, they’re sharing the record’s fourth single, “The Sun In The Sands,” premiering early with Under the Radar.

“The Sun In The Sands” is a searing post punk effort, soaked in distortion, stabbing guitar tones, and wiry bass work. The track careens forward at an unstoppable pace, amassing tension with caustic textures and ranting vocals before taking a hairpin turn with the explosive chorus. It is an assault of anarchic instrumentation and wild-eyed vocal deliveries, yet the band also feels tight and propulsive, rendering the track with a surprisingly catchy undercurrent.

The band’s Gareth Thomas says of the track, “It’s a semi-fictional account of the estate where I live in South London and my feuding neighbours who LOVE to fight, and LOVE to make each other suffer. I recorded my vocals in my flat for this one and was a bit worried they might hear me shouting about them when I was doing it. ‘The Sun in the Sands’ is the name of a roundabout just across town that I’ve heard on radio traffic reports since I was a kid. It always sounded quite mysterious and otherworldly to me, but I’ve been there as an adult and it’s sadly quite ordinary.”

The track also comes with an accompanying video, directed and edited by the band’s drummer, Tom Brewins. “He says, “I went to recce the launderette that appears on our album cover, and it felt like stepping back in time with a load of bulky washing machines and dryers from the 60’s, most of which were out of order. My DP Conrad Magan and I conjured up a plan on how to get Gareth’s head into the machine, and then thought of other ideas to keep the music video moving. In reality, sitting in a launderette is pretty mundane so I wanted to turn it into something exciting, something unusual. The use of split screens, the particular lens we shot on and how we graded the final video was all in aid of creating a 60’s aesthetic, to tie in with the launderette and to make the whole thing feel a little bit like stepping back in time to a different world. We think it worked!”

Check out the song and video below. Feel Worse is out on March 22nd via One Little Independent Records.