From the opening moments of bitknot, it’s apparent that Feeble Little Horse has discovered a wholly new gear. The place on Lady with Fish the blown-out textures have been extra ’90s indie rock and shoegaze, on their newest LP, there’s a extra trendy edge to the distortion and the riffs lower cleaner. Equally, the place the digital glitchiness was largely relegated to window dressing on their sophomore document, on bitknot it’s integral to the preparations and a core a part of their rising, distinct sound.
We acquired a preview of this new path on the one-off single, and one in all my favourite songs of 2025, “This Is Actual.” It blended blast beats, Sonic Youth-esque guitar melodies, pitch-shifted vocals, and glitchy samples. It even briefly lets the metronome click on bleed into the observe. It’s a three-minute chaotic tour de pressure that must be heard.
Bitknot reins within the scatterbrained tendencies and turns the thesis of “This Is Actual” into one thing extra approachable and sustainable over the size of a 25-minute LP. The opener, “Doorway,” begins with a wail of suggestions and a pummeling sequence of guitar stabs earlier than settling right into a melodic microloop of synths and vocals over a programmed drumbeat. It drifts again to the massive drum hits and fuzzy guitars for the refrain, regularly including parts earlier than collapsing into an outro of beat repeats and vocal stutters. It’s extra “restrained hyperpop” than “maximalist indie rock” by the tip.
“Rewind” relishes in its tacky synths. It’s school rock guitar and aloof guitars seamlessly married to chicken recordings, a synth koto patch, and meowing melodies. “Shady” pairs low-quality MP3 guitars with a drum loop that sounds ripped from a 1998 difficulty of Laptop Music Journal. “Dior” even brings again the clicking observe gimmick from “This Is Actual” for its outro.
If “This Is Actual” was making an attempt on a splashy new outfit on the retailer, bitknot is studying to include a few of that outfit’s flamboyant parts into your each day wardrobe and make it yours.
It by no means reaches the absurd giddy highs of final yr’s single, however it’s a greater showcase for Lydia Slocum’s songwriting. The lyrics veer from candy on “Cradle” (“I’ll draw our child’s face / Give it your final title”), to bitterly disaffected (“That butterfly was my mistake / An analog of one thing faux / A metaphor I couldn’t shake”) on “Upside Down.” Slocum’s even acquired jokes on “Dior” (“He hit my line and mentioned he desires to know his possibilities / Can’t inform a lie, I advised him, ‘Slim like my Virginias’”).
The again chunk of the document totally embraces the band’s new digital aesthetic. “Upside Down” is the closest to the uncooked glitchiness of hyperpop, “Guts” contains a chopped-up vocal as a lead melodic instrument, and “Buying” has a siren-like loping lead guitar and is bathed in refined low-bit noise. The nearer, “DMT,” explodes out of the audio system with a bathe of digital sparkles and a riff that feels like somebody enjoying a guitar strung with rebar.
The Feeble Little Horse on Lady with Fish with an incredible band, however they felt like one thing of a throwback. On bitknot, they’ve grow to be one thing extra, one thing particular.
Feeble Little Horse’s bitknot is on the market now on Bandcamp and most main streaming platforms, together with Qobuz, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Spotify.