• News

• All

Jan 05, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Dan Monick

Long-running New York indie rock outfit We Are Scientists are back later this month with their forthcoming eighth full-length record, Lobes. After debuting in 2006 with the dance punk of With Love & Squalor, the band have diverted in many different directions over the years, incorporating new color and sonic texture before returning to a more guitar-driven sound with 2021’s Huffy.

Lobes sees them trying on synth-tinged soundscapes electronic beats, offering up some of the band’s sharpest material yet. They’ve already teased the record with early singles “Operator Error,” “Less From You,” and “Lucky Just To Be Here,” and today they’re back with their fourth and final single, “Settled Accounts,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Settled Accounts” finds the band once again hitting the dancefloor, delivering a track loaded with syncopated guitar lines, shimmering synth textures, and a vibrant hook on the chorus. The band’s penchant for driving dance punk guitars is on full display, but they couple their rock edges with glossy production and soaring synth-backed melodies, adding a sense of neon-soaked euphoria to their sound.

Frontman Keith Murray explains of the track, “When I was a younger, more brazen guy, I was incredibly steadfast in my beliefs. Everything I liked was not just ‘enjoyable,’ but “categorically good,” the people I hung out with were not just ‘fun people,’ but the ‘best gang,’ the ideas I subscribed to were not just ‘interesting,’ but ‘fundamentally correct.’ These days, I’m just way less sure about everything. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a bullheaded fool who will stridently argue that some particular genre of music (Country Pop) is inherently dumb, or that BASEketball is probably the most important cinematic contribution of the 1990s, but I pretty much never believe that I’m actually, objectively right about anything.

The more I live, the more I experience, and the more people deliver rhetorical smack-downs on the daily, the more I just realize I don’t know anything. Anything! All of what I thought was rigorous intellectualization has kind of gotten me nowhere. I might as well just surrender and go with it. Anyway, it’s nice that things have come full-circle. Strident old Keith would have argued that funk was the one true musical genre. And here we are, with We Are Scientists’ funkiest tune yet!”

Check out the song and visualizer below, out everywhere tomorrow. We Are Scientists’ new album Lobes is coming January 20th.