Kevin Bronson on June 15th, 2022

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Rounding up new singles from Young the Giant, the Small Calamities and HUNNY …

YOUNG THE GIANT, “Wake Up”

“Wake Up” is SoCal quintet Young the Giant’s first release since 2018 and introduces the band’s forthcoming fifth album, “American Bollywood.” “‘Wake Up’ is where this story begins: a fever dream from the poet Vyasa of past lives and visions, the journey of this band and all of our collective identity over the last four years, and the prologue to our fifth studio album, ‘American Bollywood,’” lead vocalist Sameer Gadhia says. “‘American Bollywood’ will be told in four acts: Origins, Exile, Battle and Denouement.” Since YTG’s previous album was released, Gadhia, who was reared in Irvine in a musical family on a diet of Indian classical, has become host of the SiriusXM Alt Nation show “Point of Origin,” which highlights artists of color. He’s also chafed at how indie-rock has been regarded as the domain of white dudes. Young the Giant’s new single sounds as ambitious as the concept behind the whole record; think of it as an alternative rockers’ answer to Cornershop’s “When I Was Born For The 7th Time.” Tickets for Young the Giant’s just-announced Nov. 12 show at the YouTube Theater go on sale Friday, June 24.

THE SMALL CALAMITIES, “Stay Above”

Unofficially L.A.’s best-kept secret, the Small Calamities continue to cover acres of emotional terrain across, vaguely, the genres of power-pop, folk, emo and orchestrated finery. “Stay Above,” written by Charlie Wolf and Crystal Dunning, is a wistful wonder featuring Scarlet River on violin and choral backing vocals arranged by Annie Afrilu. Plus, the opening lyric: “You were glad you didn’t grow up in the Midwest with Republicans and storms / ’Cause you knew that you might chase them — the storms, I mean — that chaos in your bones …” Wolf says this about the song, the follow-up to “Hey Cat”: “We were driving around New York the day before a live recording session when Hurricane Ida hit — it was flooding, the freeways were closing just after we had entered them, cars were floating around and flipping over — it was legitimately one of the scariest moments of my life. After we finally made it back to safety, Crystal and I wrote this song in the middle of the night. We loved it so much we scrapped the song we were planning to record the next day and recorded ‘Stay Above’ instead. There’s a real sense of urgency in this one that is very special to us.”

HUNNY, “Loser”

The follow-up to “Speed Dial,” Hunny’s new single “Loser” is the latest from their new EP “Homesick,” out July 22 on Epitaph. Unlike other songs seemingly resigned to loserdom, Hunny singer-guitarist Jason Yarger wants more. He really really really does. Spin this bouncy, infectious song enough, and you might be a winner, or feel like one.