Blonde Bones formed when Nashville natives Christian Barnett and Joe Reb were both studying at the University of Tennessee. After creating a lot of buzz both on campus and around their home town, the band expanded to their current four-piece form adding Daniel Ryan and Jacob Carey to the lineup. Released in 2020, the band’s debut album, Hiding Out, was a self-deprecating take on loneliness set to a backing of trippy psych-pop. Recently signed to Midwest indie label The Record Machine, the band have spent the last two years working with producer Damon Moon, and the result is their upcoming EP, Swimming Pool. With the record set for release later this summer, today Blonde Bones are premiering the accompanying video for the latest single from it, New Animals.

A song that came to frontman Christian Barnett within just a matter of hours, New Animals is both a tribute to Christian’s wife and a musing on the passing of time, the way as one phase of your life ends, you are “presented with an opportunity to grow into someone new”. What starts off as a typically unhurried slice of slacker rock, slowly shifts into the luxurious sound of the chorus, with the textural synths and metronomic drums nodding to the likes of Other Lives or Local Natives. Lyrically, the song seems to touch on ageing and acceptance, growing out of the person you were and into the one you want to be now, “we could be new animals if we want to. Do we want to?”

The accompanying video, created with director Nic Huey, was originally planned as something completely different, as Christian explains, “We’d originally gone out to shoot this slomo rock climbing thing…watching through it we fell in love with the strange, dreamlike mood and color of the footage. It felt like a perfect fit for New Animals”. Check out the video below.

Swimming Pool is out later this Summer via The Record Machine. For more information on Blonde Bones visit https://www.blondebones.com/.