Line me up and play me back,
I’m like a jukebox disco heart attack.
Cocaine cowboy, your secret stash,
stereo junkie, don’t burn out too fast.
Party goodies and inward glances get swallowed together like bad vitamins, which feels about right for Philly psych-rock duo Kewl Haze. Their latest single, Stereo Junkie, aims straight for the adult panic button and leans on it until the room starts spinning. This is music for people who learned too late that fun has consequences but still remain unbothered by them.
Stereo Junkie tears off like a busted jukebox wired to a dance floor heartbeat. Riffs ricochet, harmonies stack high, guitars smear, and the vocal floats through the mess with a dealer’s grin. It plays as a self-aware rush, the listener already itching. The hook knows it. The warning knows it too. Years of watching friends flirt with excess seep through the shine, smudging the grin with experience.
The song revolves around obsession and speed, repeat and desire, fueled by a flawed logic where staying relevant is like survival. Time seems to pause, identities blur, and everything repeats until the system overheats. Pleasure presents itself as connection, while burnout lingers nearby, patient and waiting.
Elements of Sixties colourbleed, Seventies swagger, Madchester mischief, and Nineties oddness are all dumped into the same pot, simmering and stirring together until the eras blur into a single, unruly flavour. Dan Scott Forreal shrugs it off: “A hip-hop drum break, an 1980s analogue synth, a country guitar thing, a CSNY vocal harmony, an acoustic guitar with a swampy electric beneath…that taken all together sounds like us,” he laughs. The DNA points to The Dandy Warhols, Kula Shaker, Eels, and Cornershop, but the fingerprint remains local.
Behind the curtain, Forreal and Derek Sheehan act like basement alchemists with a decent credit score. Multi-instrumentalists, producers, singers, mixers—two guys doing too much and making it count. Four years disappeared into bedrooms and proper studios, raising eyebrows among loved ones while the record took shape. The result feeds fans who like their psych-rock restless, dance-minded, and happily impure.
“We would have a couple of beers before studio sessions, talk about life, and that led to an openness in the studio,” Forreal says. Sheehan follows with the punchline and the bruise: “A lot of life happened in the span of making the record, some hectic and difficult situations, but we laughed our asses off. We took a lighthearted outlook on everything we wrote about.”
Stereo Junkie is a track featured on Kewl Haze’s debut album, Suburban Sherpa, which is set to be released this spring.
Listen to Stereo Junkie below, or here:
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The post “A Jukebox Disco Heart Attack” — Philly Psych-Rock Duo Kewl Haze Share New Single “Stereo Junkie” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.