After decades of giving our parents a hard time for seeming stuck in the ’60s cultural moment while their TV diets have simultaneously deteriorated into a smorgasbord of police procedurals, Millennials everywhere are likely having a hard time fessing up to watching Apple TV’s recently launched crime-drama/post-punk-revival period piece City on Fire. As with seemingly any romcom Michael Cera was involved with throughout the 2000s, the series’ budget didn’t skimp on accuracy when it came to employing musicians for its fictional band—Interpol’s Paul Banks and The Walkmen’s Matt Barrick appear on the credits alongside more recent indie-rock outfits like Slow Pulp and Been Stellar.
Although Zach Ellis was also tapped to contribute to the soundtrack, the opportunity also helped inspire him to complete the debut album from his Dead Tooth project, initially conceived with DIIV guitarist Andrew Bailey back in 2018. The new single “You Never Do Shit” serves as the first single from their self-titled LP—out July 18 via Trash Casual—and it feels closely aligned with the sounds of Brooklyn circa 2005. “The prompt was to write something in your own unique voice that sounded like it may have come from the early aughts, which is kind of what I do already,” Ellis laughs.
The single focuses on the dance-punk movement that began eclipsing the more guitar-based music of The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs midway through the decade, with the instrumental bringing bands like !!! and The Rapture to mind nearly as much as Ellis’ vocals invoke The Bravery’s Sam Endicott. “Before I moved to New York in ’09 I was chasing the tail end of the DFA disco-punk movement,” Ellis recalls. “My friends and I would often take the bus to the city to see bands like The Rapture and TV on the Radio, so this song just came naturally for me. Of the two demos I submitted [to City on Fire], they ended up going with the other one—aptly titled ‘City on Fire’—to be recorded by Jason Hill featuring members of The Voidz and The Killers, but I got to keep this one and turn it into a Dead Tooth song.”
The track is being released with a music video that sees Dead Tooth coordinating a dance routine throughout the song’s runtime (well, most of it, anyway). Your move, OK Go.
