Hotly-tipped Atlanta glam punk band Starbenders have released the latest single from their Love Potions album.
Push is an eerily seductive recording, with a video that pictures a future where human contact has all but vanished, set in a bleak, neon-tinged world where the homeless beg for Bitcoin and the masked face of Bill Gates stares down from the walls.
Starbenders bassist Aaron Lecesne says, "In a world where human contact is forbidden, is love our rebellion? This video tugs at the darkest corners of our imaginations. It's like the monster under the bed, or in the closet, or on TV. It might not be real, but it could be."
In mid July the band released a video for Something Ain't Right, a song driven by the kind of greasy riff Johnny Thunders would have been proud of but brightened by modern production crunch.
And two weeks later they released two videos for Cover Me. The first was taken from Love Potions, while the second was a new, acoustic version.
Love Potions' hook-filled mix of pop and rock borrows heavily from the past – the band admit to its sound being influenced from everyone from Abba to Guns N' Roses, Jefferson Airplane to Van Halen – while their sound is coated in a thoroughly modern, undeniably atmospheric sheen.
"We really just put our all into it," says Kimi Shelter, Starbenders singer and guitarist. "We wanted to come in old-school with it, and make sure that we were really honouring the ghosts of rock'n'roll past. It was frustrating, but the process really made us. It was both parts: beauty and pain."
