CPR is what someone does when your heart or breathing stops. It’s a life-saving technique. CPR is also Crisis Public Relations, a thrilling new screwy-pop band from New York City consisting of Reggie Mids, Isa Heller, John Shakespear, Noah Tanen, Meg Wright, and Eleanor Wright. In its own way, CPR the band is also a life-saving technique. When you make a nasty oopsie at work or get soft-canceled for inappropriate behavior at the club, who else can you turn to but CPR, equipped to handle all of your dire media needs?
The band’s debut EP, Life Rights, is knottily obsessed with language, presentation, and persona—a thoughtful antidote to our dying-if-not-already-dead age. This is a band interested in intellect and intent, which seems to be a hurdle not everyone is able to clear in the year of our lord 2025. More than that, though, the extracurricular material is amplified by the inherent goodness of Life Rights. “Out the Window” sounds like a vague memory of Oasis playing at Baby’s All Right, while “You’ll Be Fine” is a dreamy, abstract cut much aligned with some of the best experimental pop work emerging out of NYC right now.
To learn more about Crisis Public Relations, we asked the band some questions about their story, Ingmar Bergman, and the best way to fix the media landscape. Perhaps Mids sums it up best when he defines the term “life rights” and how it relates to CPR, explaining that both feature “words that are extremely meaningful, but when put together have a very clinical definition that’s almost devoid of meaning.” Check out their answers below, and stream Life Rights here.
CPR is listed on IMDb. What does the synopsis read?
John Shakespear: What’s the inciting incident in our two-sentence synopsis?
Isa Heller: There’s a team of highly trained crisis public relations professionals waiting to help. But I don’t know if that’s a plot.
Shakespear: In the movie version we’d have a mysterious and very wealthy client whose demands send us on some kind of adventure.
Heller: I’m reading the worst PR disasters of 2025. These are probably above our pay grade.
Shakespear: Nothing’s above our pay grade.
What’s a musical or non-musical reference that listeners should check out before diving into Life Rights?
Heller: The band Grumpy has one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen. Heaven and the rest of the group are such honest and talented performers, baring every part of themselves on stage. Their music has wormed its way deep into my brain, and “Crush” is one of the best songs of 2025.
Meg Wright: Vive l’amour, [Tsai Ming-liang’s 1994 film] about a vacant luxury apartment in Tapei where three people end up squatting, unbeknownst to each other, and living out these fraught-yet-glorious eras of inner crisis and romantic turmoil. They’re so lonely at the beginning and so lonely at the end, but there’s also this small, slow redemption you start to feel inside the apartment, which itself is really strange and sterile—luxe debris from a fast-changing city. Not much “happens,” but it’s totally compelling. I think the line the film walks with regard to feelings of dire daily living are related to what we’re going for.
Reggie Mids: You should look up what “life rights” means. We were sitting at the dinner table once and someone mentioned someone selling their life rights, and I just stopped him and said, “Wait, life rights? What does that mean?” It’s in line with our band name, which is words that are extremely meaningful but when put together have a very clinical definition that’s almost devoid of meaning.
Since the band is fascinated with persona, what's the best Bergman movie?
Heller: I would put Persona on top, probably. It’s so good: iconic, gay thriller that’s shaped a lot of modern cinema.
Band members have had jobs across the media landscape. What’s CPR’s proposal to fix the broken media industry?
Mids: Worker-owned local media.
There’s a crisis that is unique to CPR. Who do they call to fix it and why?
Heller: That’s what all of our songs are about! Everyone is working through the moment of crisis, and to fix it we produce music.
Mids: When a crisis emerges we first go through an internal review process, consulting the id, the ego, and the superego. Meg is our internal fixer who gets us out of the nastiest snarls. We haven’t encountered a crisis we can’t solve yet. If we did, we’d call our parents.
