Stream: Dummy, ‘Final Weapon’

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Dummy

Dummy emerged as frontrunners for our mythical Most Interesting Band in L.A. last year on the strength of two ill-timed (thanks, pandemic) but aggressively eclectic EPs. It’s not just their musical influences — shifting between ambient/drone/psych rock, proto- and post-punk, Krautrock, shoegaze and combinations thereof — it’s their compulsion to cast a wary, often icy, eye at the world around them.

“Making music shouldn’t be fun” is the mantra they’ve posted. The fruits of their labor, though, can be, without sacrificing conceptual heft.

The band, the brainchild of Baltimore transplant Joe Trainor, recently signed to Chicago-based Trouble in Mind Records, which will issue Dummy’s first full-length, “Mandatory Enjoyment,” on Oct. 22. It was produced, engineered and mixed by the band along with Joo-Joo Ashworth (Froth, Numb.er).

“Final Weapon” is the second single released thus far — it’s three playful minutes about a not-so-playful topic.

“The song weaves a lot of disparities together,” says the band’s Emma Maatman, who directed the DIY video. “It’s got a frantic beat but a laid-back, dreamy vocal delivery. It’s a fairly poppy and upbeat track, but the lyrical themes are rather serious: nuclear weapons testing and military experimentation. The video relates more to the overall feeling of the song – on an initial surface level everything is bright, colorful fun, but pretty soon things frantically devolve in front of your eyes, and more disturbing images start to appear.

“On a very basic level, the idea for the ‘Final Weapon’ video was a take on ‘squish’ videos, or any of the ‘satisfying’ viral videos that pop up in your various social media feeds. I’ve always found something inherently unnerving about those. We were hoping it would make for a fun video to watch, I knew for sure it would be a fun video to make, and most importantly I thought it would capture the feeling the song gives me – like a psychedelic Dadaist birthday party spinning out of control.”

The song follows the early-August release of the lead single, “Daffodils.”

||| Stream: “Final Weapon”

||| Also: Watch the videos for “Final Weapon” and “Daffodils”

||| Previously: “Dummy” EP

||| Live: Dummy plays at Permanent Records Roadhouse on Sept. 18 along with the Shaking Hands, Force Model and Cupid & Psyche. Info. Dummy also supports Dehd on Nov. 3 at Zebulon. Tickets.