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Apr 17, 2025 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Mikayla Hubert

Over the years, Yumi Zouma have quietly become one of indie pop’s best melody makers. Their early albums introduced them via effortlessly blissed-out dream pop, while their 2022 album, Present Tense, and subsequent EP found them augmenting their crystalline melodies with newfound sprightly energy and gauzier textures. During that time, bandmates Christie Simpson, Josh Burgess, Charlie Ryder, and Olivia Campion also spread out geographically. Christie currently lives in Melbourne, Charlie in London, Josh in New York, and Olivia in Wellington, New Zealand.

Today, they’re back with the news that they’ve signed with Nettwerk, with a new project to come later this year. They’re also sharing the record’s lead single, “Bashville on the Sugar,” premiering with Under the Radar.

Unsurprisingly, “Bashville on the Sugar” is full of Yumi Zouma’s bright, buoyant melodicism, soaked in watery synths and Simpson’s warm vocal tones. However, the track is also one of their most energetic. Campion’s drums urge the track forward with tight, rapid-fire fills as Ryder and Burgess’s guitars tangle together into a washed-out slurry of melodies. The contrasting textures find the band as rich and dreamy as ever, yet filled with a newfound infectious momentum.

That sense of forward motion plays out in the lyrics as well. As the band explains, the record was inspired by the subway. “The first song on our forthcoming project that we really dug into, it’s an ode to the subway and public transport, New York’s in particular,” they say. “The band has a deep affinity for it; its reliability and the access it provides are unlike anything we experienced in New Zealand. At the same time, its unpredictability—what you’ll see, who you’ll bump into—keeps each trip rooted in the present.”ᐧ

Check out the song and video below and stream the track here. “Bashville on the Sugar” is out everywhere tomorrow, April 18th, via Nettwerk.