The term “rap-rock” used to mean something very different from what it means now. For one thing, it used to denote a genre, whereas now it’s probably as generic a tag for music as “alternative” due to the fact that most new pop music is as inspired by rap as it is rock. LA trio Younger Hunger are among the many young bands who came of age in a post-genre world, growing up with artists like Gorillaz without second guessing that group’s wildly experimental ideas.
“Day Traitor” is the latest single from this group, and like its predecessors, it feels natural in its blurring of lines between late-aughts pop-punk and hip-hop, though this track gets a little hairier in its tapping into niche corners like shoegaze. “‘Day Traitor’ was the first song written from this EP,” the band’s Tony Davia shares. “Beckett made the cover art for it before the song was written, and I remember just staring at it for a while and then pulling out that main guitar riff from the song. After I made the demo I went on a walk and listened to it, like, fifty times on repeat. Then we took it to Zach [Fogarty] and he just took it to a different level sonically. All in all, my favorite YH song.”
Hear the single below, and keep scrolling for a photo diary the band’s put together over the past year.
When COVID hit, we decided that if we couldn’t tour we were going to learn how to make videos and push ourselves to build out the world of YH. We started uploading a video a week for a few months. The pace forced us to be more creative.
By summer, we started to feel that our songwriting and production process was in need of a change-up. We’ve always been very active in our production, with every song starting with a demo from Tony’s laptop.
After making all those videos ourselves, we questioned what would happen if we extended that same DIY approach to our music. Rather than renting out big studios and getting expensive-sounding recordings, we wanted to see what would happen if we were to start and finish our songs on laptops completely.
During the process of writing/recording what became our EP, Crying in the Pit, we were put in contact with Zach Fogarty. We played him the first version of our EP, and he gave us his feedback.
That day, we sent him stems for a song called “Too Much,” and he added production. The sound that came out of our sessions with Zach would help to define the record as a whole.
We’ve always felt that our music teetered between the extremes of aggressive and dreamy. We could never decide which direction was the right way to go.
I think we finally realized with this EP that we didn’t have to choose. Aggressive dreaminess was the ethos of the EP recording process.
Crying in the Pit represents that to us. Our new record is something you can mosh to, cry to, or cry while you’re moshing to.
