Their band name is @, and they describe their sound as “hyperfolk.” Roll your eyes, sure, but also open your ears. The duo of Philadelphia-based singer-guitarist Victoria Rose and Baltimore-based multi-instrumentalist Stone Filipczak started collaborating remotely during the early months of COVID lockdown, developing a strange chemistry that ultimately yielded debut album Mind Palace Music. It’s coming out in February on Carpark, preceded today by lead single “Friendship Is Frequency,” which has kind of a Sung Tongs/Dodos vibe but also some ’60s California psych overtones.

Here’s what Filipczak shared about the song:

I had just been on a run with an older friend of mine and was complaining about how hard it is to make friends (it was about 6 months into the pandemic so lots of people were probably feeling that way). He said something about how friendship is all about frequency, you have to see people often in order for that familiarity and trust to form. I thought that sounded cool and started to conceptualize a double-entendre using the word frequency in its musicological sense. I imagined a visual waveform representing two people’s lives and that’s where the heart of the song comes from.

I got home from the run and wrote the song in the shower in about 10 minutes. I think I recorded it that same day.

Watch Clara Murray’s animated video for the track below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Parapet”
02 “Star Game”
03 “Letters”
04 “Friendship Is Frequency”
05 “Boxwood Lane”
06 “Where’d You Put Me”
07 “Major Blue Empty”
08 “First Journal”
09 “Cut From Toxic Cloth”
10 “Camera Phone”
11 “My Garden”

Mind Palace Music is out 2/17 on Carpark.