Back in 2018, three ascendent singer-songwriters — Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus — got together and recorded an EP under the name boygenius. Since then, all of them have become a lot more famous — both alone and because of their proximity to each other — and now they’re releasing their debut full-length as boygenius, the record, which started taking shape during the early days of the pandemic and was recorded over a month’s time at Rick Rubin’s studio Shangri-La studios in Malibu. As my colleague Tom Breihan laid out in our Premature Evaluation review of the album:

The PR campaign was loud and striking and masterfully executed, but it wouldn’t mean anything if the record, the first full-length boygenius LP, didn’t deliver the goods. The three women in boygenius know how music history works, and they know that a wack and overhyped follow-up can poison the golden memories of a great debut. Maybe they worried about that possibility, or maybe they just trusted themselves. Either way, they delivered the goods. Just like the EP, the record is special.

Today, the main component of all that work (the record) is out. And it also comes with another piece of the puzzle: a film directed by Kristen Stewart, which in keeping with the simplistic stylings of the record is called the film.

Set to the first three singles from the record — “$20,” “Emily I’m Sorry,” and “True Blue” — the film is just over 14 minutes and opens with a three-way split-screen featuring Dacus, Baker, and Bridgers. After Dacus hums softly to “Without You Without Them,” Baker wakes up in a Friends-esque race car bed as “$20” plays.

Later, Bridgers stands in a stadium singing “Emily I’m Sorry” as monster trucks roll by. The band convene and set a pile of cars on fire, paint the walls (and each other) blue, and they all make out. Remember the episode of Six Feet Under where Claire and her art-school friends paint the walls of her bedroom blue, have sex, and sing to Death Cab For Cutie’s “Transatlanticism”? Those are the vibes.

Watch that and check out the album below.

Here’s Kristen Stewart introducing the film: “It was a knockout, fall-down honor to be asked to try to distill the incredible fireworks show that pops up when these three come together. I am such an enormous fan. I wish I had them to look up to when I was a kid.”

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRcdXDsr/

the record is out now via Interscope. This week, boygenius also revealed their North American tour dates.