We’ve been clued in to Massachusetts-based songwriter Cooper B. Handy’s wariness of the music industry at least as far back as 2021, when he released a solo LP under the moniker LUCY titled The Music Industry Is Poisonous. It’s no surprise, then, that his primary side gig is a casual lo-fi punk affair commemorating a longtime friendship with Salvadore McNamara (they met on Myspace in 2007), a celebration of coming together and “just being able to shoot the shit and hang out” in an era when album release cycles are becoming exponentially more complex. Their latest album resulting from these sessions as Taxidermists, titled 20247, is a testament to the carefree nature of their feel-good hangs: 12 scrappy recordings with titles like “Disaster in Showbiz” that scale back the production value as much as possible.
The album’s latest single, “Does the Wind Know,” lands somewhere between vintage post-punk and the 2010s garage rock scene spanning Ty Segall’s early fuzz-drenched work and the power-pop-inspired output of Dirtnap Records. The two-minute track cruises on the repetition of a few vague lyrics, though the duo insist that it still packs plenty of meaning. “It’s a winter mantra: ‘Does the wind know that you’re cold?’” they share, adding that it’s also “a love song” and “an ode to believing in what you’re doing.”
Check out the track’s appropriately hazy music video below, and pre-order the LP here via Danger Collective. You can also find their upcoming North American tour dates through March and April here.
