To write “Bad to Worse,” Ra Ra Riot did a lot of driving. Inspired by a nine-hour road trip from Washington, D.C., to the outer reaches of Cape Cod, the song is about “watching the world from the window of the car or bus, and how there’s a familiarity to everything but it’s never the same as it once was,” singer Wes Miles said in a press statement.
The first track from the band’s fifth full-length, Superbloom, finds them in a reflective mood, riding on a slow, low tempo and meandering melodies. Miles delivers a particularly affecting vocal performance, showing off his upper range during the track’s chorus.
Today, the group shares the music video for “Bad to Worse,” capturing the song’s road trip mentality. “The story of the song (and a lot of this record, too) is partly about driving, particularly in trucks,” Miles says. “I always thought it was cool to take a road trip in a utilitarian vehicle like that. So there’s a lot of driving of that beautiful old Chevy in this video.”
The clip additionally gives viewers a peek inside the minds of the Ra Ra Riot members. “Each of us also did a few shots indoors in what we felt was a version of each of our mind palaces: [bassist Mathieu Santos] in a quiet library, [guitarist Milo Bonacci] in front of a wall of amps, [violinist Rebecca Zeller] singing in the bathroom with glitching flowers, [drummer Kenny Bernard] on a moped, and me sitting drinking tea,” Miles explains. “Those abstract elements and the hard truck imagery meet together in the end to reveal the inside of our album art: the bit-crushed volcanic mountain behind all the fields of flowers.”
Watch the video below. Superbloom is scheduled for release on August 9 via Rob the Rich Recordings/Caroline. You can pre-order it here.
Ra Ra Riot are already on the road with Third Eye Blind and Jimmy Eat World on the Summer Gods tour, with dates through early August. They hop across the pond for European shows in December. See dates here.
