After fronting the skate-punk outfit Tsunami Bomb for nearly a decade, Emily Whitehurst’s pivot to a synthpop solo project may not have been what most attendees of Warped Tour in the early aughts may have suspected. Yet with deathdreams—her fourth full-length under the moniker Survival Guide—out now, it’s clear that her reinvention as a darkened-indie-pop songwriter is complete.
Shortly after the record was released in October, Whitehurst celebrated the achievement by performing a pair of the album’s tracks in Blanco, Texas—about an hour outside of San Antonio—for a “Neighborhoods” session. It being south-central Texas in late October, Whitehurst braved near-triple-digit temperatures to play through the winding electro jams “Blood Perfume” and “Lady Neptune” before excusing herself to go “melt somewhere else.”
Check it out below.
