When we named Font a Band To Watch two years ago, we categorized their music as dance-punk, but that descriptor doesn't fit their new song at all. "Texas" is the lead single from the Austin-founded band's new album American Bully XL, the follow up to 2024's Strange Burden. It's a shimmering, stuttering reverie that reminds me a lot of Hovvdy, another group that got its start in Austin.
Font laid the foundations of American Bully XL during a trip to California to work in Dutch Interior's Long Beach studio. While they were away, the Kerr Country Flood had a deadly impact back home, as frontman Thom Waddill explains:
Pretty much everyone I know from home was just one or two degrees away from someone who lost a loved one in the flood. So the state was on our minds when we came up with the initial idea together in one of our final improv sessions in the Long Beach studio. The file of the idea that we passed around for months was just called “Texas.” I was intimidated by writing a song with that title. It wasn’t until I moved up to Brooklyn months later that I found the chords and lyrics to put on top of it. I was listening to a lot of country, like a lot of people do after they move away from Texas. There’s a lot of Lyle Lovett in this song.
Listen below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Bad Faith"
02 "Punish Task"
03 "Night Sight"
04 "Noon Room"
05 "Wilderness2"
06 "Cling"
07 "Texas"
08 "You"
09 "Bang Bang"
10 "Atom"
11 "American Bully XL"
American Bully XL is out 11/13 via Acrophase. Pre-order it here.
