Hailing from Portsmouth, The Hippaes are something of a super-group, featuring many of the city’s finest noise-makers. The band consist of Kelly Kemp from Dear Everyone and No Comply, Roo Pescod formerly of Bangers, and their new bass-player, Roo’s brother Ben, from Attack Vipers. The Hippaes released their debut EP, I Just Want To Float In The Void, on Keroleen Records back in 2016, and are set to return in the coming months with a brand new album, Hip! Hip!! Hippaes!!!, on the wonderful Everything Sucks Music. Ahead of that release, we’re sharing the first single from the record, The Ghost.

The Ghost begins with a thrillingly bombastic-guitar riff, lifted straight out of The Breeders playbook, before Kelly’s contrastingly low-key vocal enters, “stop picking up your phone, you’ve got my number, I am at home”. From there the whole thing plays out as a gently devastating piece of heartbreak-punk; it’s hard to work out what’s hitting harder the gun-shot snare drum, or the melancholy lyricism, “don’t waste so much time, like lovers in the night, I’ve been waiting for you. All my life I’ve been waiting for you”.

Marking themselves out as natural contemporaries to the likes of Doe and Bruising, The Hippaes are taking the influences of their youth and spinning them through a modern world-view, creating something both thrillingly energetic and subtly devastating. Three cheers for the return of The Hippaes, they’ve never sounded more exciting.

Hip! Hip!! Hippaes!!! is out soon via Everything Sucks Music. Click HERE for more information on The Hippaes.