Hailing from Sheffield, Dearthworms emerged back in April with their debut single, Strike Low. While the band members play in various other projects, that was the first taster of their debut album, Sapsucker, a record they say is, “about weird people and weird experiences”. With the record arriving later this month, today the band are premiering the latest single from the album, Rorthide.

A self-styled, “cowboy song”, Rorthide’s inspiration came from a picture that got stuck in vocalist/keyboard-player Nick Potter’s head, as he explains, “I got obsessed with an image of an empty house on a big American plain a while back. We then wrote a nice and direct song imagining someone living there and being totally awful to everyone he meets“.

Musically, Rorthide is a fabulously energetic beast, fittingly propulsive considering the track was the first time the band settled on their current lineup with Juni Rothwell switching to the bass. Despite clocking in easily under the three-minute mark, the whole track has a chameleonic quality, the initial yelping No-Wave, giving way to a more low-slung, moody middle section, before gradually rebuilding to the cathartic, squalling bombast of the outro, a timely reminder not all songs need to gently fade away. There’s something really refreshing about Dearthworms, “proudly a hobby band”, and freed from the pressures of expectations, allowing themselves to indulge their desire to, “sit in pubs, play gigs, berate people, and get our weird sad thoughts out of our heads and into music”. This is a group of friends making music for the sheer joy of it, and it’s all the more intriguing and compelling as a result.

Sapsucker is out July 26th via Redundant Span Records. For more information on Dearthworms visit https://www.instagram.com/dearthworms/.

Dearthworms Live

19th July – Delicious Clam, Sheffield (Album Release Show w/ Marcel Wave + POHL)
26th July – Shakespeare’s, Sheffield (Tramlines Festival)
27th July – Jabberwocky, Sheffield (Tramlines Festival)
28th July – Hallamshire Hotel, Sheffield (Tramlines Festival)