Stream: Nightjacket, ‘Don’t Say a Word’

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Nightjacket (Photo by Britt Wilen)

With guitar that arcs across the heavens like a shooting star and a chorus that soars almost as high, “Don’t Say a Word” is the first release of 2022 from L.A. dream-pop quintet Nightjacket. It’s the first tune from a forthcoming EP — and a celestial song that’s had two lives.

Singer-songwriter Andrea Wasse, who joined the band in 2020, originally wrote the song with songwriter-producer Billy Mohler for a solo project that never materialized. With others she had written, it languished. Then the Nightjacket opportunity materialized: “A dream come true,” she says, “A band looking for a singer, a singer looking for a band.” Their first EP as a group, “Following the Curves,” was released in May of last year.

She set about bringing more songs to the band. “I was like ‘Hey guys, I have these songs that were waiting for the right vessel, and I’m pretty sure this is the right vessel’ and asked if they’d want to take a stab at turning them into Nightjacket tunes,” she says.

“I loved this song from the get-go and I was so happy that it found the right home,” Wasse adds. “It was meant to be a Nightjacket tune. Jordan [Wiggins] and Louie [Schultz] added the Nightjacket flair, the beautiful guitars, synths and percussion, [producer] Adam Lasus joined us to help get the sounds down, and it turned into this beautiful record that feels nostalgic yet new.”

When Wasse and Mohler penned the original, she was in the euphoria of a new relationship. “So I channeled all of the nerves and butterflies I had about starting something new into the song,” she explains. “The idea of shedding the past (‘Erase the fingerprints the ghosts left on skin / Let all the old loves die so new ones can begin’), not wanting the spell/druggy haze of new romance to break … that’s where it came from.”

||| Stream: “Don’t Say a Word”

||| Live: Nightjacket, along with Bizou, Brother Swan and Phil Stancil, play a free show on Saturday, Sept. 3, at the Goldfish. Info.

||| Previously: “Darlin’,” “Following the Curves” EP, “Just a Little,” “Lonely Archer,” “Pink and Yellow Roses,” “Waking Up With You,” “The Right Way to Fall”