Today, July 15th, Sweeping Promises share the pulsating ripper “Accent”, available now on all streaming services from Sub Pop.
 
The band describes “Accent” as a, “…cacophony of routine, the plight of a lowly drone who dreams of breaking out of an instinct-born & increasingly restrictive flight path. It’s got a flapping, insectoid rhythm, which is misery to play. We call it ‘cicadence.’ It’s a succession of bee-sting realizations from an individual dangerously at risk of becoming feral, independent, an outsider.”
 
“Accent” follows previously released singles “Cocoon” and “Shooting Shadows” from their forthcoming album, You Say I Romanticize, available Friday, August 14th from Sub Pop. 

Sweeping Promises has also confirmed a four-date run of in-store appearances at independent record stores across the Midwest. In-store performances begin on August 13th at Euclid Records in St. Louis, followed by performances at Goner Records in Memphis, Feel It in Cincinnati, and Bric-a-Brac Records & Collectibles in Chicago. These in-store performances are FREE to the public, and you can grab a Loser Edition of the new record on Black and Yellow Confetti vinyl while supplies last. 
 
Sweeping Promises embark on a North American headlining tour in the fall of 2026. The first leg begins on Wednesday, September 9th, in Oklahoma City, OK, and runs through September 29th, culminating in a hometown show at White Schoolhouse in Lawrence, KS. The second leg begins on October 27th in Omaha, NE, and ends on November 18th in Nashville, TN. Further live dates, including international touring, will follow soon. Tickets available at sweepingpromises.com. 
 

YOU SAY I ROMANTICIZE IN-STORES WITH LIVE PERFORMANCES 
Thu. Aug. 13 - St. Louis, MO - Euclid Records @ 6:00 PM
Fri. Aug. 14 - Memphis, TN - Goner Records @ 6:00 PM
Sat. Aug. 15 - Cincinnati, OH - Feel It @ 5:00 PM
Sun. Aug. 16 - Chicago, IL - Bric-a-Brac Records & Collectibles @ 4:00 PM 
 
YOU SAY I ROMANTICIZE 
NORTH AMERICAN HEADLINE TOUR
Wed. Sep. 09 - Oklahoma City, OK - Resonant Head
Thu. Sep. 10 - Denton, TX - Rubber Gloves
Fri. Sep. 11 - Austin, TX - LEVITATION
Sat. Sep. 12 - San Antonio, TX - Paper Tiger 
Tue. Sep. 15 - Phoenix, AZ - Rebel Lounge
Wed. Sep. 16 - San Diego, CA - Casbah
Thu. Sep. 17 - Los Angeles, CA - Sid the Cat Auditorium
Fri. Sep. 18 - San Francisco, CA - Rickshaw Stop
Sun. Sep. 20 - Portland, OR - Mississippi Studios
Tue. Sep. 22 - Vancouver, BC - Fox Cabaret
Wed. Sep. 23 - Seattle, WA - Baba Yaga
Fri. Sep. 25 - Boise, ID - Shrine Social Club Basement
Sat. Sep. 26 - Salt Lake City, UT - The DLC at Quarters
Sun. Sep. 27 - Denver, CO - Hi-Dive
Tue. Sep. 29 - Lawrence, KS - White Schoolhouse
Tue. Oct. 27 - Omaha, NE - Slowdown
Wed. Oct. 28 - St Paul, MN - Turf Club
Thu. Oct 29 -  Milwaukee, WI - Cactus Club
Fri. Oct. 30 - Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
Sat. Oct. 31 - Detroit, MI - Lager House
Tue. Nov. 03 - Toronto, ON - Monarch
Wed. Nov. 04 - Montreal, QC - La Sala Rossa
Thu. Nov. 05 - Boston, MA - Deep Cuts
Fri. Nov. 06 - Boston, MA - Deep Cuts
Sun. Nov. 08 - Troy, NY - No Fun
Tue. Nov. 10 - New York, NY - Night Club 101
Wed. Nov. 11 - Brooklyn, NY - Baby’s All Right
Thu. Nov. 12 - Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church
Fri. Nov. 13 - Washington, DC - Union Stage
Sat. Nov. 14 - Richmond, VA - Cobra Cabana
Mon. Nov. 16 - Durham, NC - The Pinhook
Tue. Nov. 17 - Atlanta, GA - The Masquerade (Purgatory)
Wed. Nov. 18 - Nashville, TN - DRKMTTR

Sweeping Promises’ You Say I Romanticize was recorded over an 18-month period and is a tribute to the chaos of creation and collaboration under shifting circumstances. Guitarist Caufield Schnug and bassist/vocalist Lira Mondal found and tested themselves in their combination tour house and recording studio in Kansas, annually working on dozens of albums from other bands, hosting tour stops, planning shows, and the like. After an immersive process of tracking and whittling down YSIR demos and carving out an idiosyncratic chamber-recording method for the album’s intentional wall-of-sound, the duo brought in touring drummer Spenser Gralla to play the songs as the band would on stage. 
 
Sweeping Promises’ You Say I Romanticize is available to preorder now on CD/LP/Digitally worldwide from Sub Pop.

Sweeping Promises
You Say I Romanticize
 
Tracklisting:
1. Shooting Shadows
2. My Friend’s An Entomologist
3. Last Man
4. Rapture, Or…
5. Abduction On Camera
6. My Anchoress
7. Cocoon
8. Accent
9. Does He Want To Be The Weatherman?
10. Write Lightly

Having fearlessly plumbed the murky depths of our archives, Sub Pop’s crack team of archivists have resurfaced with glad tidings! The Go’s Free Electricity, the group’s storied, long-lost album, will finally see worldwide release on Friday, September 4th, 2026! The ten-track long player was written, composed, and arranged by Bobby Harlow (except track one, which was written by Harlow and Dion Fischer; and track five, written by Harlow and Cary Loren).
 
Free Electricity was mixed and produced by Matthew Smith, engineered by Jim Diamond at Ghetto Recorders, and mastered by Jim Kissling at Jim Kissling Mastering in Detroit, Michigan.
 
The Go’s Free Electricity features highlights such as the title track, “All Dimensions Are Loose,” and “Secular Century Man,” and is available now to preorder on CD/LP/Digital from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com in North America, Mega Mart Europe in the UK and EU, and your local record store will receive the limited Loser edition on Metallic Gold vinyl (while supplies last).
 
More on The Go’s Free Electricity by Matthew Smith:
The Go appeared in Detroit in 1998, and I immediately became a fan. I’d been waiting for Detroit to produce a group this good since Brownsville Station broke up, and here they were, except I liked The Go even more than all their hometown predecessors. I eventually was asked to produce their first two albums, so I was granted the rare opportunity to be the producer of my favorite rock and roll group.
 
The first was the debut album Whatcha Doin’, and the second was the mysterious, legendary “lost” album, Free Electricity.
 
After a few bass and lead guitar personnel shakeups, and a lot of touring in the U.S. following the release of Whatcha Doin’, The Go were back in Detroit with a bunch of new songs which they wanted to record immediately. We again went to Ghetto Recorders, and were in there for a week, maybe two weeks? The Go played these songs at full blast in the studio, getting them all on tape in just one or two takes. The atmosphere surrounding these sessions was one of openness and creativity, so the overdubbing process was an avalanche of ideas, coming down really fast, and going to tape effortlessly.
 
The title track might have ended up sounding like a more traditional rock and roll song, but I suggested they do a take with the lead guitar blasting non-stop, something which made the dynamics more like that of a free jazz ensemble. When I sat down to mix the track, the reverb tank seemed to open up like a giant hole in the earth’s crust and suddenly what came out of the speakers was a big, cavernous sound, like some haunted frequency beamed across the time barrier from the Grande Ballroom circa 1968. At this point, the mixing board felt more like a Ouija board. We were going where the music was leading us, and the strange sounds just kept on coming.
 
There’s a heavy jazz influence on this record. We were all listening to a lot of ‘60s free jazz, so it seemed quite normal (to some of us) that the mixes tended to sound a bit more like records by Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra than the records being made by our peers in the rock and roll scene.
 
Perhaps this was perceived as a strange approach back in the year 2000, and there certainly were some people who felt we were totally out of control and maybe a bit crazy, but The Go were only as out of control as their musical and literary heroes, like the Fugs and Allen Ginsberg and the Bonzo Dog Band and Nilsson and lots of other individualists who inspired them. 
 
Guest appearances by Cary Loren from Destroy All Monsters and John Olson from Wolf Eyes only reinforced the album’s musical direction. Anyway, “weird” or not, this was an inspired recording made by an inspired group of musicians. There was a feeling of excitement and adventure happening at these sessions, and I think we captured that feeling on tape.

The Go
Free Electricity
 
Tracklisting:
1. Free Electricity
2. Secular Century Man
3. All Dimensions Are Loose
4. Peacock Angel
5. Pharaoh’s Tomb
6. Into Outer Space
7. Turnin’ On
8. Blood Red Sun
9. Muthers of the Earth
10. Golden Dawn
 

Today, Friday, June 26th, Downtown Boys have released Public Luxury, their enthralling new album, out now worldwide from Sub Pop. The band is celebrating the album’s entry into the world with a poignant new video from animator Romy Matar for album standout “Yellow Sun,” which The Skinny notes, “there’s a melodic softness that reveals a fragility under the surface, something which might even appeal to fans of The Killers.”
 
Band member Joey La Neve DeFrancesco elaborates further on the song and visual: “‘Yellow Sun’ is a song for Lebanon, written as Israel’s ongoing invasion and occupation of the country began in 2024. The lyrics were inspired in part by the work of Lebanese poet and painter Etel Adnan, especially the poems “Beirut 1982” and “The Arab apocalypse,” which she wrote during Israel’s earlier occupation of Lebanon from 1982-2000. As with Ednan’s work, the song is meant to name the horrors (“phosphorous skies,” “every day an angel explodes”) while also insisting on the possibility of a new day: “The trees grow in every direction / I’m still heavy with love…
 
“The accompanying video by Lebanese animator Matar is a fable-like tribute to the decades of displacement and hostility faced by the indigenous shepherds and rural communities of Palestine and Lebanon since 1948. It also contains visual references to Adnan’s paintings.”

Downtown Boys are announcing a new UK and EU late fall/winter headlining tour, which begins on December 4th in Amsterdam, NL at Paradiso, and runs through December 21st in Rome, IT at Monk. Tickets for these shows are on sale now.
 
Downtown Boys’ previously announced US live dates for summer and fall 2026 are underway, with an album release show and benefit tonight, June 26th, organized by Willimantic Records for the Covenant Soup Kitchen & Food Pantry at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in the band’s second “hometown,” Willimantic, CT. The band’s US touring schedule continues through Saturday, September 26th in Mississauga, ON at Second Summer Festival.
 
Please find a current list of dates below.
 

Today, June 25th, Australia’s Girl and Girl have shared two new digital singles, “Hell” b/w an official video for their song “It’s Dead.”

The band’s front person, Kai Aubort, shares this about the video/single for “It’s Dead”: “We’re always hinting at death in our music, talking about it in such roundabout ways, so I thought it was about time I just came out and said it … IT’S DEAD!!!!”
 
You can watch the official video directed by Alexandros Kalas below. 

The “Hell” and “It’s Dead” singles are Girl and Girl’s first new material since the release of the band’s 2025 singles “Okay” and “The Cow,” and their 2024 debut full-length, Call A Doctor, which Rolling Stone Australia called “emotional mayhem that’s relatable and very catchy.”   The band is also announcing a seven-date Australian run, beginning on July 17th at Coolangatta, QLD, with additional shows in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Byron Bay, and the Gold Coast. Please see a full list of shows below.   Fri. Jul. 17 - Coolangatta, QLD - Coolangatta Hotel (Inner Realm Party) Sat. Jul. 25 - Brisbane, QLD - The Junk Bar (18+) Sat. Jul. 25 - Brisbane, QLD - The Junk Bar (All Ages) Fri. Jul. 31 - Sydney, NSW - Northies Sat. Aug. 01 - Melbourne, VIC - The Curtin Fri. Aug. 07 - Byron Bay, NSW - Byron Arts Factory Sat. Aug. 08 - Gold Coast, QLD -  Super Secret Block Party

What people are saying about Girl and Girl: “A fantastic debut from a sparkly and singular new band.” [Call The Doctor] NME   “A perfect dose of indie – punk rock at its best.” - [“Hello”] Happy Mag   “A warped mix of Talking Heads, Rolling Blackouts and bits of post-punk but led by a man with a mullet and one of their aunts plays drums in the band!” - [SXSW Review] BBC 6 Music   “Brisbane four-piece Girl and Girl are ones to watch in the world of sharp-tongued raucous-riffed garage rock…Girl and Girl’s all too rare multigenerational collaboration brings a fresh angle on the post-Strokes garage rock sound.” KUTX Radio   “Girl and Girl recall the stalwarts of 2010s garage rock, their affinity with jangly guitars and buoyant rhythms undercut by feverishly intense playing and a cloying sense of claustrophobia.” [Call The Doctor] DIY Girl and Girl “Hell” + “It’s Dead”