Thanks to all of his time in bands like No Warning and Fucked Up, Ben Cook is a crucial figure on the global punk and hardcore scenes. These days, though, Cook mostly focuses his energy on making crisp power-pop with as Young Guv. He’s really good at it, too. Next week, Young Guv will release the insanely catchy new album GUV III. Thus far, Cook has already shared a generous handful of early singles: “Lo Lo Lonely,” “Only Wanna See U Tonight,” “It’s Only Dancin’,” “Good Time.” Today, we get one more.

Young Guv’s latest single is called “Take Up All My Time,” and it’s a soft-focus dream-pop jangle with a bittersweet heartstring-tugger of a melody. Cook sings through heavy reverb over a lush bed of strings and guitars, and the result is lovely. Check out director Adam Stewart’s grainy, performance-centric video below.

Talking about “Take Up All My Time,” Cook says:

I made a demo of this song really high in the middle of night when I lived in NYC, still pre-pandemic. I don’t have a clue how to play it and all the guitar tracks are in different capo positions. I’ll probably never know. When I got to the mountains in New Mexico, this was an instrumental that I always had planned to write lyrics to, but I hadn’t had the chance yet. Again, I wrote the words and recorded the vocals in the middle of the night, very high, and put it on my hard drive and never listened to it again. I knew it would be on the album because I knew I’d never write a ballad-esque, emotionally-driven high-desert-by-way-of-Brooklyn shuffle ever again. When we got to the studio in LA to record the live drums that’s all we did to it. I left all the demo tracks and all my home recorded vocals on it because I couldn’t recreate the mood–and like I said… I have no idea how to play this song. It’s about the feeling of wanting to throw yourself into someone else and completely disappear, that feeling of wanting to spend every waking moment together. I deeply fear that in this new world of intense isolation I might never feel that again.

GUV III is out 3/11 on Run For Cover Records. Pre-order it here.