Videos: Cuffed Up, ‘Little Wins’ and ‘Love Is …’

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Cuffed Up (Photo by Sheva Kafai)

With its stabbing riffs and call-and-response vocals, Cuffed Up’s new song “Little Wins” is about not beating your self up for not conquering the world. And it manages to sound like Ben Gibbard fronting a classic rock band.

“Little Wins” is one of two singles released today by Cuffed Up — singer-guitarists Ralph Torrefranca and Christina Apostolopolous, with drummer Joe Liptock — as they announce their signing to L.A.-based Hit the North Records. It’s the first original material from the band since a pair of 2022 singles followed their second EP, 2021’s “Asymmetry.”

Of “Little Wins,” Torrefranca says: “We all set really unhealthy definitions of what ‘success’ is supposed to look like, constantly comparing ourselves to others. We start our own little businesses or throw ourselves into a career with really high expectations only to be met by what we think is ‘failure,’ but it’s really not that. It’s the lack of grace that we give ourselves because social media has trained us to compare each other’s worth, glorifying the rat race of life rather than practicing gratitude. ‘Little Wins’ is about focusing less on the losses and more on the baby steps that have brought us the success that we have now.”

On the companion single “Love Is …,” Cuffed Up sounds even less like the post-punk outfit of their early releases. Not that it’s a bad thing. Apostolopolous and Torrefranca trade off vocals on a tender crooner that, she says, “is a portrait of and a love poem to our high school selves. We trudged along, quiet and observant, with music being the only thing that saved us.”

Ben Mehlman directs the videos for both tunes. “Little Wins” finds the band doing their best chamber-of-commerce bit, visiting some of their favorite L.A businesses — Pizzanista, Kingswell, Merci Milo, Secret Headquarters and WACKO/Soap Plant. The second video is set at Hollywood Pumpkin Junction.

||| Watch: The videos for “Little Wins” and “Love Is …”

||| Previously: “10 for 10,” “Even the Worm Will Turn,” “Bonnie,” “Canaries,” “Danger, Danger,” “French Exit,” “Mother/Father”