Kevin Bronson on March 1st, 2021

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L.A.-via-NYC trio Slothrust have returned with their first single since they turned the goofy ’50s hit “Splish Splash” into a punk song back in 2019.

The band — singer, guitarist and lyrical web-spinner Leah Wellbaum, bassist Kyle Bann and drummer Will Gorin — get up inside listeners’ heads with “Cranium” (via Dangerbird), a typically muscular rocker with a suggestive (and droll) streak a mile wide.

“I think of ‘Cranium’ as an absurd mating ritual dance by one of those beautiful complex birds with iridescent tail feathers. Except instead of feathers I am holding family heirloom tweezers and my hands are coated in honey. It’s sweet, but incredibly uncomfortable and definitely overbearing,” Wellbaum says.

Well … sure.

She adds: “The song is about wanting to serve love but not knowing the ‘right’ way to do so — often offering too much, or something unwanted entirely. It is a promise to love both absurdly and impossibly with a heavy sprinkle of pain.”

Slothrust’s fourth full-length, “The Pact,” came out in 2018 via L.A.-based Dangerbird Records. As on that album, the trio worked with Grammy-nominated producer-engineer Billy Bush on the new single.

||| Watch: The video for “Cranium”