Wild Beasts Announce 5th LP, 'Boy King,' Drop Lead Single "Get My Bang" Music Video

Enthralling experimentalists Wild Beasts have announced their forthcoming 5th LP, Boy King, due out August 5 via Domino with the release of lead single and video, "Get My Bang" and a host of European tour dates.

Wild Beasts have never been afraid to evolve across albums, and this first taste of Boy King - leather jackets, immensely '80s cover art, and all - is no exception. More straightforward than previous works, a linear drum base and unabashedly direct lyrics shed much of the painstakingly clever wordplay and dynamic brooding that set apart their past discography as "Get My Bang" reignites much of their signature libidinous themes but with an altogether different sort of polished package. "No getting it right / No getting it wrong / Just getting it on," indeed.

Co-frontman Hayden Thorpe explains,

“After five records there had to be an element of ‘what the fuck?’ It became apparent that that guitar almost became the character within the songs, that phallic character, the all-conquering male. I’m letting my inner Byron fully out, I thought I’d tucked him away, but he came screaming back like the Incredible Hulk. I think ‘Boy King’ is an apocalyptic record. It’s about swimming in the abyss. When you think about sex, you’ve got to think about death, they’re one and the same.”

Boy King was recorded in Dallas, enlisting producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, The War on Drugs), while the accompanying visual was shot in Belgrade and directed by Olivier Groulx (Arcade Fire, alt-J). Check out the video, tracklist, and tour dates below.

Wild Beasts - Get My Bang (Official Video) from 'Boy King' - the new album out 5th August 2016 Pre-order digital: http://po.st/BoyKingDL Pre-order CD/LP/LPX: http://po.st/BoyKingStore Listen to Wild Beasts on Spotify: http://po.st/WildBeastsSP http://po.st/MyBangStream Directed by Olivier Groulx The video for 'Get My Bang' was shot in Belgrade and directed by Olivier Groulx (Arcade Fire, alt-J, Scott Walker) featuring vocalist Hayden Thorpe's twisted routine of Justin Timberlake-meets-Trent Reznor choreography.

Boy King

1. Big Cat
2. Tough Guy
3. Alpha Female
4. Get My Bang
5. Celestial Creatures
6. 2BU
7. He The Colossus
8. Ponytail
9. Eat Your Heart Out Adonis
10. Dreamliner

Tour:

6/18 – Madrid, ES @ MadCool Festival
7/26-27 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
7/28-29 – Brighton, UK @ Hove Old Market
8/18 – Brecon Beacons, UK @ Green Man Festival
8/26 – Dumfries, UK @ Electric Fields
8/27 – Helsinki, FI @ Modern Sky Festival
9/02 – Vlieland, NL @ Into the Great Wide Open
9/04 – Laois, IE @ Electric Picnic
9/24 – Hamburg, DE @ Reeperbahn Festival
9/28 – Bristol, UK @ Motion
9/29 – Oxford, UK @ O2 Academy
9/30 – Margate, UK @ By the Sea Festival
10/01 – Sheffield, UK @ The Foundry
10/03 – Cambridge, UK @ The Junction
10/04 – London, UK @ The Roundhouse
10/07 – Newcastle, UK @ Northumbria Uni
10/08 – Glasgow, UK @ QMU
10/09 – Manchester, UK @ Academy
10/12 – Belgium, BE @ Botanique Orangeries
10/13 – Paris, FR @ La Gaite Lyrique
10/14 – Tourcoing, FR @ Le Grand Mix
10/15 – Strasbourg, FR @ La Laiterie
10/16 – Cologne, DE @ Luxor
10/18 – Copenhagen, DK @ Pumpehuset
10/20 – Berlin, DE @ Kesselhaus
10/21 – Prague, CZ @ Lucerna Music Bar
10/23 – Zurich, CH @ Rote Fabrik
10/25 – Milan, IT @ Magnolia
10/26 – Lyon, FR @ Epicure Moderne
10/29 – Bilbao, ES @ BIME

Michael Cera and Willow Smith Team Up for 2016's Most Baffling Collaboration Thus Far

Take heed! The collaboration we’ve all been chomping at the bit for has finally willed its way into existence – the ever-illusory 15 year-old, Willow Smith, and everyone’s favorite perpetual teenager, Michael Cera, have teamed up to create the most unforeseen collaboration of 2016 to date.

“Twentyfortyeight 2.0” marks yet another surprise musical release from Cera, who once moonlighted as Mister Heavenly's bassist, while marking the Superbad actor’s first “celebrity” collaboration. The track features the youngest Smith expending that familiar Smith progeny egotism, as the 15 year-old opens the track speaking aimlessly about “a yellowish hue” which she goes on to describe as "kind of nebulous." In typical teenage fashion, Smith appears to over-exert herself when trying to imaginatively masque her lack of world experience with bushy tailed sentiments of “being all that is” and “it feels like it's trying to tell me something” mixed with 420 tropes of “is it true that we really are?” It appears as though Willow has been spending far too much time in the whimsical company of her older brother, Jaden.

All of Willow’s aimless opining aside, the song actually isn’t “bad.” There’s a wandering innocence to Willow’s empty lyrics that almost elicits a state of wonder – whether aided by psychotropic substances or not – that endears the listener to Willow’s rambling state. The best part of the track is Cera’s production, which feels like its been ripped directly from a Juno or Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist outtake. In more recent pop culture lore, “Twentyfortyeight 2.0” sounds like a spiritual companion to M83’s “Raconte Moi une histore” from the band’s 2011 Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.

The wandering video-game synth arpeggios sweeten an already saccharine song that allows the listener to distract themselves when Smith reaches the end of the track talking about societal struggle – “We’ve manufactured the society the runs on the backs of those with truth for them to victimize” – but instead of rolling your eyes, feel free to lose yourself in a wonderful wandering menagerie of stream of consciousness musing, echoing harmony hums, and lullaby beat production. 

Dank Meme Alert! The Father, John Misty Wants That "Real Love Baby"

Many don't know this, but Father John Misty actually was CBS' first choice to host the Late Show. He graciously declined when they told him he was not allowed to live-tweet during the show.

Blessed be the Father up high above. The benevolent lover of you and me, sardonic saint of all far below, the Father John Misty has a bevy of songs to bestow. “Why not?” is his word, but we know that he must. He knows not why he does, but it shall be known as word. The Father, John Misty has songs that must be heard. Praise him on high, but especially online – take to your Twitter, and troll til the night – inform the masses of “rejected” Toyota Prius promos, a House of Cards theme song, and the immaculately conceived “Real Love Baby.”

Forgive me, I must have blacked out. All the preceding nonsense aside, if you’re not a Father John Misty devotee such as myself, then you may not realize that despite the I Love You, Honeybear victory lap slowly coming to a close, Farmer Jah Misery is still cranking out satirical songs and creating commentary that would liken a modern day Oscar Wilde (settle down bibliophiles, it's just for dramatic effect). Realistically, Father John is more like a modern day analogue to Henry Chinaski, but I digress.

A mere handful of hours ago, Father John Misty released a tantalizingly playful new track, “Real Love Baby,” on his soundcloud page after releasing indie-folk skewering “Prius Commercial” track. “Real Love Baby,” is kind of remarkable upon first listen - despite being on tour for the better part of a year and a half now, Father John Misty has released one of his most hook-y and pleasant psych-pop track to date. A stroke of classic Father John brilliance, its safe to say that this single is likely to be FJM’s soundcloud “subtweet” answer to his “Prius Commercial” released the day before.

Who is Father John subtweeting (or subclouding), you ask?

 I know its likely to make me look more of a total dunce than I already do in everyday life, I would surmise that FJM is placing “Real Love Baby” out into the ether as a subtle assertion to the indie world that while he enjoys tooling around with the tired tropes and proclivities of indie music, he can still make better music than most despite doing it in jest, and “Real Love Baby” is living proof of such a fact.

All that being said, I realize my inference of opinion is about as unbiased as Trump saying Trump Tower has the best tacos, but that’s beside the point. The real point of my writing this is to inform those of you that have yet to hear the good word of the Father, John Misty that the message of the day is here to stay, and it's “Real Love Baby.”

Watch Radiohead's "Burn the Witch" Music Video, Their First Release in Five Years

Following their much discussed social media cleanse, Radiohead have finally released their first new content in nearly five years with music video, "Burn the Witch." The lead single builds upon pulsating strings, a croaking low-register vibration with drum kits, a light violin melody, and Thom Yorke's airy vocals.

The claymation visual depicts a town being investigated by an inspector who is eventually trapped in a giant wooden statue and burned alive, evoking images from The Wicker Man. While the song's visuals offer a grotesque illustration of cynicism, collusion, and cultural disdain, the song's balance of orchestral levity and weight, along with the chimes of its spattering violins and Yorke's soaring falsetto, make it awe-strikingly beautiful. Paired with lyrics dealing with a society oppressed by a superstitious culture, the song provides an accessible entry into an uncomfortable conversation on political scapegoating.

"Burn the Witch" has been a longtime project for Radiohead; renditions of the song appeared in the band's 2006 and 2008 touring campaigns and its earliest form has been dated to the Kid A era.

Local Natives Return to the Present With New Single "Past Lives"

"Save me from the prime of my life," Local Natives plead at the start of their first track in three years, gliding into their signature vocal harmonies before mounting percussion crescendos in some tight glimpses of guitar.

The LA favorites' new single "Past Lives" is officially released today, though it's been performed live in the past and even appeared in Will Arnett's Flaked. In a press release vocalist and bassist Taylor Rice says of the song,

“The world is not static, it’s made new over and over again. But we tend to live the same patterns in a loop, loving the same way, wrestling the same demons, the same dynamics playing out around us again and again. Untangling every moment and decision that led us to where we are now can make fate feel concrete, inescapable. But our world is not fixed, it’s constantly reemerging, and we can change it into whatever we want. ”

It's the newest and most convincing of a recent string of hints pointing towards a new LP on the way following a revamped website and a few scheduled summer shows including Lollapalooza; we'll probably be seeing a lot more of "Past Lives" in the future.

Past Lives http://localnatives.com

Watch Cage the Elephant Get Into "Trouble" in New Music Video

Cage the Elephant's Tell Me I'm Pretty single "Trouble" now has a flashy new video, complete with a wild west duel, a lot of baroque royalty fanning themselves, and some of the best costumes the Kentuckians have been seen in yet. It's a little difficult to grasp just exactly what is happening through all the dramatic jump cuts, but it looks good. Frontman Matt Schultz earned his directorial debut in the process, describing it as something like “John Wayne... in a [Jean] Cocteau play.”

It's also not the first time they've performed in this sort of setting; this video brings back memories of the band ambling through the desert to the tune of "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" during their humble beginnings, though it's clear they've evolved quite a bit in the interim (just look at the change in production value!). It's appropriate, then, that the deceptively sunny sounding "Trouble" gives a lyrical nod to the track, alluding, "You know what they say, yeah / The wicked get no rest." Whoever it is who shot the bearded guy does look rather rattled.

The video comes at the dawn of an extensive summer tour, which you can find below the embed.

Get "Trouble" from the New Album 'Tell Me I'm Pretty' Now!

Read our review of Tell Me I'm Pretty here.

EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE: Strange Heights Set out For "Home" in Second Single

Following debut single "Believe Me," Chicago-based newcomers Strange Heights are revealing the second track from their forthcoming self-titled EP, "Home" through Transverso Media.

Soft strings and xylophone plinks beckon you in, swirling around gentle vocal harmonies grappling lyrically with setting out against adversity and, ultimately, finding home. Flirting with the boundaries between folk and rock, Strange Heights fit the puzzle of their six-piece together to uplifting results.

Keyboardist and backing vocalist Nic Ten Grotenhuis tells Transverso, "'Home' is about perseverance in the face of resistance and about how passionate we are about music."

Formed last September, Strange Heights finished recording a four song EP just two months later, with Strange Heights due out May 15.

FREE Download: strangeheights.bandcamp.com/ Produced by: N. Rivera Mixed and Mastered by: Trevor Buckingham Artwork by: Miles August © 2016 Strange Heights

Lewis Del Mar's New "Loud(y)" Music Video Has Them Rocking Rockaway

Instantly hard-hitting duo Lewis Del Mar have released a music video for their Hype Machine-propelled opening single "Loud(y)," in which they're aptly causing trouble across Rockaway Beach, NY's streets and house show circuit.

The dynamic, lo-fi track off their debut EP released via Columbia in January thrusts with a frenetic drum beat under commanding Cage the Elephant-esque vibes - from "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" acoustic stabs to a "Teeth" style spoken-word rant - and spills them out into Mac DeMarco's neighborhood to delightfully disastrous results.

"Can you please turn yourself down?" vocalist Danny Miller asks. It doesn't seem like Lewis Del Mar will be heeding their own advice anytime soon.

Get the debut EP: iTunes: http://smarturl.it/ldmEP Spotify: http://smarturl.it/ldmEPstream Follow Lewis Del Mar: http://www.lewisdelmar.com https://www.facebook.com/lewisdelmar https://www.twitter.com/LewisDelMar https://www.instagram.com/lewisdelmar

EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE: Victor Perry Guides Us to New Sounds On "Lighthouse"

The grounds of Atlanta's Morehouse College are full of musicians; to rap or sing R&B is the living and breathing culture that dwells within the gates of this institution, but hearing an artist that stands out with a rhythm different from the rest can be rare. 

Victor Perry, an emerging artist with a vocal range that surpasses that of many of his peers, is one such voice. His second single “Lighthouse,” a pop ballad, shows exactly what kind of artist he is: one without limits and always looking for a different sound. He paints an eloquent picture of what it means to have a relationship in turmoil, and what it’s like to feel the struggle of finding the path to stability, trust, and loyalty as he declares, “I’ll steer her to grace.”

Perry uses mid-tempo snare beats and a soothing piano and guitar intertwinement to supplement his image of a man desperately treading above the waves in a futile attempt to save a love, telling Transverso, “It’s not always about calling out their mistakes, it’s about being there to support them.”

With an EP titled 4 A.M. Nostalgia slated for release in the near future, "Lighthouse" is just a beacon of what's still to come. Stream it below, and buy it here.

Delivered by a voice with harmonic lyrical phrasing and contemporary crooning, Perry’s lyrical capabilities range from metaphoric calls for love and poetic searches of self-expression. His newest single, “Lighthouse,” off his upcoming EP – 4 A.M. Nostalgia, establishes a narrative that reveals a delicate perspective on the complicated nature of both being in love and what love is in itself.  In what seems to be a display of vulnerability to some, his music reiterates the timeless battle between love’s beauty and toxicity.

From Airheads to The Grammys, DIY Duo White Mystery is ‘Outta Control’

Rare are the bands blessed with the full package of a naturally iconic appearance, instantly classic backstory, and genuine DIY earnestness all at once, yet that’s exactly what Chicago-based brother-sister duo White Mystery have always had in spades. 

The radiance of Miss Alex and Francis Scott Key White’s shocks of ginger hair somehow personify their fuzzy rock riffs better than you would’ve imagined possible, and backed by their appropriately Orange brand amps even a cursory glance tips you off to something special. But below the Iron Maiden t-shirts, denim, and lo-fi jams is a frontwoman who can shred with the best of them – when she’s not singlehandedly filling the roles of the band’s record label, PR, booking, management, and merch production all at once.

On top of being a completely self-sufficient music industry microcosm, White Mystery manages to churn out a full new album (or, in the case of last year, an entire feature-length film) like clockwork on the 4/20 date of each and every year, while Alex also daylights as the Vice President of The Grammy’s Chicago Chapter, leading one to wonder just how many different hats she can wear over her fiery locks.

To announce their forthcoming LP Outta Control, the raucous redheads took over Last Call with Carson Daly last night to debut singles "Sweet Relief" and "Best Friend," the latter a sunny, Jefferson Airplane-esque track that tells the tale of camaraderie and is stop-motion animated as an adorable canine dive bar to raise awareness of adoptable rescue dogs in a music video released today.

Transverso spoke with Miss Alex White about White Mystery's origins, Airheads, and how their next release is on a mission to make pop music good again.

Pre-order on iTunes NOW: http://apple.co/1RByTFR

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How was performing on Last Call with Carson Daly?

[It went] really well! White Mystery flew out to LA and played this legendary club called The Troubadour in Hollywood where Janis Joplin, The Doors, Guns ‘n’ Roses, even Cheech & Chong got discovered, and we played a full concert, and Carson Daly’s current NBC late night show recorded us and it air[ed yesterday.]  We’ve been on TV and we’ve been in movies, but this is our first time on network late night television.

You mentioned Cheech & Chong, are they an influence of yours?

[Laughs] Well Cheech & Chong definitely inspired the White Mystery movie That Was Awesome, which is a stoner film that came out last year on 4/20, and Cheech & Chong reviewed our album and helped premiere the trailer when it came out last year, so yeah, it was cool. Of course I love Guns ‘n’ Roses and Janis Joplin and all that stuff too.

What’s it like having an annual release date of 4/20 that coincides with the stoner holiday and is usually near Record Store Day as well? How much of that was planned?

That’s a great question. When we first started the band Record Store Day did not exist yet. So we really lucked out when two years later or so the record holiday came about and happened to always be within three to four days of our annual record release. So it really benefits our CDs and albums going into record stores around the world, and we do release it early to record stores depending on when the record store day is, so if it’s on the 15th the new White Mystery release will be in stores already.

What originally inspired setting that date?

Well it’s funny because Francis and I – my brother that’s the drummer – we had both been in a lot of different bands separately but also together with other band members. I traveled the world with my old band Miss Alex White and the Red Orchestra, [and it’d] be like, “Okay, bye Francis, see you later!” and [I] kind of left him at home and would be on my merry way with my bandmates, and when I graduated college and moved out of my childhood home here in Rogers Park in Chicago we started missing each other. We almost started hanging out more when I moved out then when I lived at home, and we started jamming and developing new songs. Myspace was available and Garage Band had become a program that allowed musicians for the first time to record a song and put it up on the internet immediately, and that really changed the environment for musicians, so here we were experimenting with Garage Band and that kind of thing, and we were like, “Wow, let’s start a band!” and we did. And we looked back at our Myspace and were like, “Oh, we started it on 4/20, I guess that’s our band anniversary!” and you know, ever since then we’ve used that date as an annual, cyclical milestone that makes sure we stay on track and are always producing new music and pushing boundaries for creativity in the music industry.

What can you tell us about this year's 4/20 release that will happen later this month?

It’s one of those things where everyone knows we put a new album out every year and have been since we started as a band, but it still surprises them somehow. It’s our best work yet, and we want to drop it like a big bomb. So basically the new White Mystery album - which is to be released on April 20th and the single [today] along with the stop motion animation music video - is called Outta Control which is inspired by White Mystery Airheads, which we had based the name of our band on back maybe 20 years ago when we got an Airhead taffy candy that said "White Mystery Outta Control" on the wrapper. [That candy’s wrapper] no longer [says that today], but that’s what inspired the name of our band [and] album. It’s really important to us to stick to our original vision. So anyway, it’s our 5th album; it is our pop masterpiece that we spent a lot of brain hours on developing it into the best possible album ever, where in previous years we did not have the luxury of time that we did for Outta Control. For instance, our third album Telepathic we recorded in two days while we were on tour in Oakland, [and] we recorded Dubble Dragon our double album at a live show in one take at a studio, so for this album we were like, “Okay, let’s take some time and really dial this album into a masterpiece.” It covers a lot of mood, but it definitely has the kind of dark witching vibes of a lot of White Mystery albums, but it has a lot of really great upbeat pop songs.

Outta Control cover art

As someone with a DIY rock background what is the ideal pop song vibe to you?

A pop vibe is sort of ironic because while the album is called Outta Control it’s probably our most controlled work yet, which is how you create pop music. For instance, a lot of times when we made albums the drumming and guitars are just everywhere, you know, it’s like exploring over here and exploring over there and just like wailing and shredding and pounding, but in order to create pop music like every single stroke and note needs to be very methodical, and once you listen back if it’s not something that sounds absolutely perfect you have to actually revisit it until it is. So that’s what we did with the new album, we tried to make it [a] perfect masterpiece and that was a very fun challenge for me, you know? I love The Monkees, I love The Rolling Stones, I love Patti Smith, and I listened to a lot of their seminal records and it also really inspired me to try to make the cleanest album possible. When you listen to record like modern garage records I like Ty Segall, for instance. A lot of times the producer will put a lot of fuzz or a lot of reverb on the record to give it this kind of lo-fi sound, but we actually wanted this record to be more of a hi-fi sound that, for instance, could be on the radio and perhaps expand our audience more so.

You seem very connected to your DIY Chicago identity and have a sort of a cult fan group. When you say you’re looking to expand what are the boundaries or lack thereof you’re looking to transcend? 

Well we’ve traveled worldwide to Hiroshima in Japan and Karlsruhe, Germany or Queenland, Ohio, you know, we’ve played a lot of pretty obscure cities on Planet Earth, and there will always be an audience of people who have seen White Mystery, and in some cases multiple times. We’ve been a band for 8 years and we’re extremely grateful for our fans because they are the backbone of what we’ve been able to achieve all these years, and what we’d like to do is make mainstream music better. So right now when you go to the Grammy’s or watch the Grammy’s it’s honestly a lot of very contrived sort of tame pop music, and a lot of times I kind of envy my parent’s generation when bands like The Who and The Rolling Stones and Deep Purple were actually popular and on the radio, and I think that the White Mystery mission would be to try to make pop music good again with this new album.

You're also the Vice President of the Grammy’s Chicago Chapter, do you often feel like you’re one of the craziest, rawest, indie-est people in that circle? How do you reconcile those two worlds, are you trying to change the system from the inside out?

Well I’m not sure how much I can actually really comment about it but I would say that the Chicago Chapter is full of amazing working class professional musicians who are on a mission to basically help musicians make a living in a world or industry that has changed a lot in the last 20 years. You know we’re in the streaming age now and people used to make money off of album sales. It’s a diverse group of people and I wouldn’t really consider myself… they’re all unique individuals and we’re all working towards shared goals of advancing music in the Midwest.

whitemysteryband.com

To go back to your origin story, you have a photo of you at an Airheads factory. How did that come about?

Yeeeahhh! So basically - and that was years ago too - we received an email from the marketing department of [Perfetti Van Minelle] - which makes Airheads and Mentos - that said, “We’ve been watching you for a long time and we saw that you’re playing Cincinnati which is just right over the river from our factory where we make Airheads in Erlanger, Kentucky. We would be honored to have you visit our factory and we will make sure that we are producing White Mystery [Airheads] that day.” So we went and we put on our little Laverne and Shirley cloak and toured the factory and they gave us tons of free candy and it was one of the best days of my life.

If you order vinyl from Polyvinyl they include Airheads in with the package; have you ever considered including White Mystery Airheads in with yours?

Yeah we have done [that], and we’ve passed them out at shows, and you’ll see there’s even a picture of us in a giant bathtub full of Airheads and we passed those out at Halloween. I like Polyvinyl and they’re in Champaign, Illinois which is kind of funny, but I think that the thing they and we have in common is that Airheads are kind of the unofficial candy of record stores. When I was a teenager and I worked at Laurie’s Planet of Sound in Lincoln Square, [Chicago] Airheads [were] the only candy we sold ‘cause it’s not like chocolate where it goes bad or melts or gets gross, it’s taffy so it just sits there and it’s kind of, you know, like a Twinkie where you could eat it today or in five years and it’s gonna taste the same. So a lot of record stores would sell these Airheads and that’s partly why we really love them and why Polyvinyl love them too; they don’t go bad, they’re flat and they ship without getting smooshed or broken, and if you ship a Snickers bar it’s gonna be, like, melty or fall apart or get smashed, where an Airhead is [a] flat sugar, non-expiration kind of candy. And they’re cheap, they were like 20 cents when I was a teenager, so it’s like you could literally have 50 cents and still get change back after you got candy, you know, so I think that [since] they’re so inexpensive and made in the USA they have the feel. Made in America, baby! And I think that that’s partly why we love ‘em so much too, that’s the secret. [Editor's Note: I had to eat an Airhead while transcribing this, and though I didn't have White Mystery on hand, the cherry red flavor I did have was probably the next most appropriate option.]

It seems throughout your career you tend to end up in duos: The Red Lights, Miss Alex White & Chris Playboy, and White Mystery. What is it about this dynamic you like best in music? Do you not like the idea of too many cooks?

Well I guess a lot of the time I would want to start a band with whoever was my best friend at the time, and, you know, it was just easy. So if there was someone else out there who’s your best buddy, who you hang out with all the time, then you start a band together; one of you plays drums and the other one plays guitar. So it just kinda worked out that way. And with The Red Lights, Elisa was my really good friend in high school and she had passed away at a really young age, and then Chris Playboy who replaced her also passed away, and Eddie [Altesleben] who was the drummer of The Red Orchestra who was a four piece band, he passed away as well, so it’s like even when you’re super heartbroken from the passing of your friends when your passion is music it helps you get through rough patches. So I like playing in two pieces ‘cause there’s just a really special dynamic that happens between two people and it allows you to be creative and collaborative, and then you never need to buy a van, you can always tour in a car.

Will White Mystery ever be solved?

[Laughs] Well back on 4/20/2008 Francis and I agreed we would do the band for exactly 10 years, so technically the riddle will be solved 4/20/2018.

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You can preorder a physical copy of Outta Control here or a digital copy here.