Formed in 2009, Soft Science began as the project of longtime collaborators Katie Haley and brothers, Ross and Matt Levine. Subsequently joined by partners Tony and Becky Cale and Hans Munz, the band have gone on to release three albums, performed at Popfests in New York and Paris and garnered a slew of critical acclaim along the way. Returning with their first new music since 2018’s Maps, next month will see the Northern Californians share their new album Lines, a co-release between three globe-spanning independent labels. Ahead of the release today the band are premiering their new single, True.

A four-year process, Soft Science started to work on Lines back in 2019, with the album created both together in the band’s home studio, and in isolation from each other during the height of the pandemic, swapping tracks and making adjustments from a distance for “what felt like an eternity”. Finally, the band came together again in a moment of joy, excitement and energy to mix the record and bring Lines to life.

That sense of energy is evident in the music of True, even if its themes aren’t as upbeat, as the band explain, “True explores the loss of a dream or the realization that the relationship you want or the pretty picture is just not going to happen or has disintegrated”. Within that loss though, Soft Science don’t only see the negatives, “with this realization, there is still hope and desire for something real, something “true.” It’s kind of a different take on a lyric theme throughout our album Lines that acknowledges hardship and challenges as a part of life at the same time hoping for peace or a happier path”.

Discussing the track, the band note the influence of the alternative scene of the 1980s, “we were inspired by 80s sounds and textures from bands like Echo & The Bunnymen, Yazoo, and The Jesus and Mary Chain”. Opening with a glitchy electronic pulse, True quickly slides into layers of fuzzy guitars and pounding drum rhythms, before soaring The Sundays-like vocals cut through the fog. While the influences of the past are writ large on the track, it equally brings to mind contemporaries like Blushing or Wild Honey.

The accompanying video, created by Kev Bolus is clipped together from The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, a 1946 film starring Barbara Stanwyck, “we thought it might be cool to put this song with an old movie that followed a complicated love story…we instantly knew it was perfect for the song”. Check it out below.

Lines is out September 8th via Spinout Nuggets (UK/EU), Shelflife Records (North/South America) and Fastcut Records (Asia). For more information on Soft Science visit https://linktr.ee/softscience.