“Bartees Strange is the Jordan Peele of indie rock – an auteur who directs everyday fears into his shapeshifting music”
– The Line of Best Fit
“Sophisticated rock… his best album yet” – MOJO ****
“Steady and unflashy yet ready to stoke crescendos” – The New York Times
“An incredible statement of intent, there are sonic departures and evolutions aplenty”
– Record Collector
“A chimeric blend of alt-rock, funk, hip-hop, and dance”
– New York Magazine
“Perfect… I could live in that groove forever” – NPR Music
“Indie rock triumph.” – Rolling Stone
“Precocious in its energy and infectious in its tone” – Clash
“Heading in a blockbuster direction” – FADER
“A boundary-blurring indie rocker of the highest order” – Stereogum
Photo by Elizabeth De La Piedra
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+ Buy on limited red Dinked edition, including signed print and bonus 7″, whilst stocks last here +
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Today, Bartees Strange releases his highly anticipated new album Horror. The album release follows singles ‘Backseat Banton,’ which Bartees debuted earlier this week on Jimmy Kimmel! Live, ‘Wants Needs,’ an uproarious confessional anthem already named one of the Best Songs of 2025 by Esquire; ‘Too Much,’ a sonic and lyrical love letter to himself; ‘Sober,’ an introspective ballad about falling short in a relationship; and the explosive lead single “Lie 95.”
Next week Bartees will share an NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert and will continue on a string of album release concerts in Washington DC, New York City and London.
Strange was raised on fear. His family told him scary stories to teach life lessons, and at an early age, he started watching scary movies to practice being strong. The world can be a terrifying place, and for a young, queer, Black person in rural America, that terror can be visceral. Horror is an album about facing those fears and growing to become someone to be feared.
Horror began at Strange’s home studio with an eye toward production. A session with Yves and Lawrence Rothman (Yves Tumor, Lady Gaga) provided a rhythmic and sonic backbone for chunks of the record. After Strange met Jack Antonoff and the pair became fast friends, Antonoff began work on Horror. The twosome finished the record together, working the songs raw, editing, arranging, and dressing them up in clothing bound to inspire fear.
Throughout the record, Strange lays down one difficult truth after another, all over a sonic pastiche of music that soundtracked his childhood. Across the album’s 12 new tracks are genre-bending threads of the music his dad introduced him to – Parliament Funkadelic, Fleetwood Mac and Teddy Pendergrass – merged with Strange’s interest in hip-hop, country, indie rock, and house.
Born in Ipswich, England to a military father and opera-singer mother, Bartees Strange had a peripatetic childhood before eventually settling in Mustang, Oklahoma. Later, Strange cut his teeth playing in hardcore bands in Washington D.C. and Brooklyn whilst working in the Barack Obama administration and the environmental justice movement.
Recently, his music has been featured on multiple popular TV and film soundtracks including Apple TV’s The New Look and A24’s I Saw The TV Glow.
Bartees Strange – Horror
4AD0746
1. Too Much
2. Hit It Quit It
3. Sober
4. Baltimore
5. Lie 95
6. Wants, Needs
7. Lovers
8. Doomsday Buttercup
9. 17
10. Loop Defenders
11. Norf Gun
12. Backseat Banton
+ Tickets to album release shows +
February 2025
15th – 9:30 Club, Washington DC, US
19th – Bowery Ballroom, New York NY, US
26th – Oslo, London UK