Chasing Fridays: Feeble Little Horse, TAGABOW, kuru, more

I'll get right into it: changes are afoot at Chasing Sundays HQ. My weekly newsletter blast, Chasing Fridays, is undergoing some exciting developments, one of them being a new segment for premium subscribers that I'm debuting this week. It's called Chasing Down, and it's a mini-Q&A at the end of my weekly dispatches with an artist, friend, or industry acquaintance who has good taste. Each edition will include a few questions about the interviewee's work, what they've been listening to lately, and a couple random, low-stakes queries just for fun.

I'll still be going in on older records I've been listening behind the paywall from time to time, but I've frankly been spinning my wheels with that section lately, and I want to offer my loyal paid subscribers something a little sexier for your hard-earned dough. As always, please feel free to drop a comment or shoot me an email (elijenis1994@gmail.com) with any feedback about what I put in my newsletter. If there's a segment or format or topic that you're more compelled to read than others, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Seriously, don't hesitate to reach out. I love hearing from ya'll.

Without further adieu, this week's Chasing Fridays is a doozy. I reviewed a couple albums, a mixtape, a few singles, and a recent live show from Pittsburgh's finest indie-gazers (feat. dope original photography by Chasing Sundays cameraman Caden Clinton). Then, I chatted with none other than They Are Gutting a Body of Water frontman Douglas Dulgarian for the inaugural Chasing Down. Enjoy.

Oh, and one more thing. I went on Anthony Fantano's stream this week to talk about Sleep Token. Fantano and I don't agree on a lot of music but we're in lockstep when it comes to how shitty most mainstream metalcore has become, so I had fun going in with him for this chat. Check it out here or below if you're interested.

kuru - Stay true forever

Between Jane Remover's Revengeseekerz, Lucy Bedroque's Unmusique, and now kuru's Stay true forever, deadAir Records is having one of the best label runs of 2025. Thanks to its marriage with rage and plugg, digicore is alive and well these days, and kuru has once again made the style sound fresh on Stay true forever, the mixtape follow-up to last year's excellent re:wired album. Although he's sworn again and again that he's "not emo," kuru sounds mighty emo on Stay true forever, whether he's confessing suicidal ideations on "If im being honest" ("I think about dying all the time but I'm way too pussy to do it") or mewing over soul-scraping static on the gut-punching closer, "I Was Meant to Die Like This." Plus, the mixtape's cover art looks like a Taking Back Sunday sleeve, and kuru himself looks...emo.

However, kuru isn't your run-of-the-mill emo rapper with an overbearing sensitivity and a grating yawp. His nimble rapping is feathery and curt. He sounds like he's always moonwalking over the beat and never touching down for more than a split second. The beats on Stay true forever are either taut and misty ("Somewhere going home") or more dangerously conductive than a bathtub full of eels ("4door"). That said, kuru's sound isn't as combustible as Revengeseekerz and it's not as candied as Lucy Bedroque's bedazzled rage. He excels at reining in digicore's overblown surrealism to devise a sound that's coifed and classy. For every Stay true forever song that evokes phone camera flashes lighting up the mosh pit, there's another where kuru sags into the beat like it's a therapist office beanbag chair. Emo is a spectrum, and kuru spans it all on Stay true forever.

Night Tapes - "Pacifico"

I'm trying to think of the most concise way to describe Night Tapes. Trip-hop Men I Trust? Magdalena Bay if they were trapped in a Criterion Closet of Warp Records albums? Not Portishead, not Portis-shoulders, but maybe Portis-knees-and-toes? I've seen this band's name cross my timeline a lot in recent months and finally decided to give them a listen this week. The London trio's older stuff is music that people use to make Lost In Translation edits with. Their biggest songs, "Forever" and "Drifting," sound kind of like Tame Impala crossed with Chairlift. Their 2025 singles – "babygirl (like n01 else)," "television," and this week's "Pacifico" – are reaching for the same conclusion that Addison Rae achieved with "Headphones On." Night Tapes almost get there.

The production on "babygirl (like n01 else)" is sleek and moody, but something about the shadowiness feels inorganic – like how there's a subtle yet meaningful difference between actual nightfall and using blackout curtains during the afternoon. Night Tapes singer Iiris Vesik can do a serviceable yet anonymous Grimes impression. Her voice works well as a soothing balm that melts into the basslines and washes against the drum breaks, but like all warm baths, the steam fatigue eventually sets in and the whole experience becomes more drowse-inducing than restorative. "Pacifico" is probably their best trip-hop song in that it's catchy and leans heavily on the impossible-to-dislike "93 'Til Infinity" sample. But the lines about supermarket produce sections and surfing vibes are Instagram woo-woo nonsense that pull me out of the music's pleasant groove. Lorem Boards of Canada doesn't feel vital to me, but I wager Night Tapes are going to do very well for themselves.

Club Night - Joy Coming Down

I have what's called The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die itch. It's an ailment that requires annual treatment. Every year, I need to anoint myself with at least one ambitious post-emo album. An album that has all the bombast of mid-2000s blog-rock ​and all the raw earnesty of something I'd download off of Sophie's ​Floorboard in 2014. Last year, my perennial rash was soothed by The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. This year, it's Club Night's first album since 2019, Joy Coming Down. I wrote a bit about the San Francisco band's new single back in February, but now that the full record is out, I can confirm that it's an absolute masterclass in rise-and-fall, clench-your-fist, stare-up-at-the-sky-and-realize-it's-somehow-all-gonna-be-alright indie-rock. Or emo. Or whatever. This is Cortisone Cream for a guy like me.

To be fair, Club Night have always been more abrasive and quirky than TWIABP. Their vocals are yippy and staccato, and the synths sound corroded from years of rust. The guitar riffs are noodly in an al dente way: tangly and spindly but also brittle and breakable. People have compared Club Night's previous work to Broken Social Scene or Arcade Fire or Los Campesinos!, but Joy Coming Down doesn't really sound like any of those bands. At this point, Club Night just sound like Club Night. The highlights on this record – "Palace," "Expo," "Station" – make me feel the way their music always has. At once burdened by the weight of existence and also resiliently hopeful that whatever I'm going through can be conquered. I love this band a lot and never expected them to release new music again. I'm happy they did. My itch is quelled. Until next year.

Told Not to Worry - Hands in the Air!

One of the most exciting trends in heavy music right now is the utterly booming screamo revival. Honestly, it's an act of journalistic malpractice on my part that I haven't gone deep on this nationwide scene in the way I have with shoegaze and hardcore, because there're so many great bands (mostly led by teens and young twentysomethings) who are making screamo in all its forms – emoviolence, Real Screamo, white belt, etc. – bigger than its ever been. Bands like Holder, bulletsbetweentongues, Ted Williams, and Kicked in the Head By a Horse have all captured my attention in recent months, but Told Not to Worry might be my favorite of them all (s/o roommate of the blog Caden Clinton for putting me on earlier this week).

The Rhode Island sextet run in the same circles as Holder and are pulling from a similar set of influences, but they're closer in tone to the unabashedly cartoonish Ted Williams. If band names like The Great Redneck Hope and Joshua Fit for Battle mean anything to you, then the cover art for Told Not to Worry's Hands In the Air! EP will tell you all you need to know. It's like if Heavy Heavy Low Low were listenable for more than 30 seconds. Or like early SeeYouSpaceCowboy for the age of PeelingFlesh. The sasscore verses are imbued with a brainrot goofiness, one of the two (three?!) vocalists does straight-up deathcore brees, and the blood-curdling metalcore breakdowns are accentuated with 808 bass bombs and "free Palestine" mosh calls. This is rollercoaster music for me. It's all thrills, over-and-done before I know it, and despite the low-level vertigo it induces, I can't help but get back in the queue as soon as I step off the ride.

Feeble Little Horse, Fib, Ear Training secret show @ [redacted] basement

Feeble Little Horse played a secret basement show in Pittsburgh last weekend. The hometown indie-gaze visionaries are way too big to be playing basement shows these days, so the actual address of the house was left off the flier and fans had to show up to a different spot around the corner and then "follow the bugs" to the real destination. ​​The bugs were cutout posters of the beetle on Feeble's recent single, "This Is Real." My friends and I showed up to the house a half hour before doors and there was already a gaggle of college kids lounging on the front lawn. One had a Car Seat Headrest tattoo and another was openly ripping a bong on the sidewalk. By the time 7:30 rolled around, the line down the block was long enough to make a restaurant host consider quitting on the spot. As we filtered into the unusually large basement space, my friends and I (the only millennials in the room 😔) scampered to the front and secured a prime view of the action – a location that would prove difficult to maintain as the evening went on.

The first act was a DJ named Ear Training who did Jersey Club edits of everyone from Drake and Ariana Grande to Kreayshawn and Doris. Ear Training was a short white kid who took his shirt off halfway through to expose his sagging pants and Louis Vuitton belt. I spent most of the set transfixed by his friend, a mustachioed youngster with a beer can who hunched over the DJ table and busted out a different, TikTok-ready dance move for every song. He was the star of the show. Next up were Fib, a Philly indie band signed to Julia's War who sound kind of like Palm or Peaer: vaguely mathy, totally fuzz-less indie-rock that kids somehow found a way to mosh to as if they were Origami Angel. By the end of their set the temperature had raised a solid 30 degrees and I was crammed in between a bunch of drunk sophomores who were loudly announcing their intention to mosh even harder for Feeble Little Horse. I'm not washed, so I could only smile at their naïve idiocy. It's their right to dance inappropriately for quasi-slowcore bands.

After a painfully protracted changeover period, Feeble Little Horse finally strutted out and manned their instruments while the sticky, restless crowd cheered heartily. This was Feeble's second-ever show with their new guitarist Rob Potesta, who replaced founding guitarist Ryan Walchonski (now of D.C. indie greats Aunt Katrina) earlier this year. Bassist-singer Lydia Slocum was plagued by technical difficulties (a series of malfunctioning pedals) that caused numerous delays throughout the set. Between the unbearable heat and the stop-start flow, it wasn't a comfortable concert experience, but that's also what made it fun. The band started out with "Freak" and the crowd lost their minds, shouting back the hook and bashing into each other like a bucket full of magnets attracting and repelling all at once. I got lost in the riptide after the second song and lost my spot upfront, but I couldn't help but jump back in the scrum and finger-point to the hook of "Chores" like I was at a Story So Far concert.

The ceiling pipes leaked a steady drip of condensation and the room was literally foggy with moisturized sweat. At one point, singer-guitarist Sebastian Kinsler announced that anyone who's too hot should simply go outside. "This isn't worth it," he giggled, amazed that anyone would subject themselves to seeing his malfunctioning indie band play in such intolerable conditions. I receded to the back at a certain point, but not until after I watched Feeble debut a couple new songs. They sounded more or less like where 2023's Girl With Fish left off; catchy and snappy, especially one that had a hook about shopping that Slocum was really milking for all its melodic utility.

When I stepped outside afterwards my shirt was drenched and my shoes were caked in a film of basement soot. I'm sure I'll see Feeble Little Horse again at some point. They'll play a real venue with overpriced craft beers and $7 soft pretzels. I won't be sweating the whole time and Slocum's bass will work properly. Their new songs will sound even better on monitors that aren't getting knocked into every 30 seconds by rowdy moshers. It'll be a good show, but it won't be as fun as it was to follow the bugs.

Chasing Down

DOUGLAS DULGARIAN
of
They Are Gutting a Body of Water, Julia's War Recordings

Chasing Down is a Q&A series with artists, friends, and others of good taste.

Douglas Dulgarian is the main songwriting force behind They Are Gutting a Body of Water, the owner of Julia's War Recordings, and a member of other projects like god of war and echotracer. TAGABOW, the most influential shoegaze band of the 2020s, just released a new single this week called "American Food" that doesn't have any shoegaze in it. It's a creepy urban folk song strung with scritched-up samples, spoken-word verses, and a weary, pitched-shifted hook that winds around your ear like sidewalk gunk collecting in skateboard bearings. It's closer in vibe to last year's stellar singles collection, swanlike (loosies 2020-2023), than the noisy, grainy sound of 2022's s and 2019's Destiny XL. I'm very into it.

For the inaugural edition of Chasing Down, I asked Dulgarian about what he's been listening to lately, the three most underrated Julia's War releases, his thoughts on TAGABOW swagger jackers, and more. Read the full Q&A below.