GAYLETTER

The first thing I do when I get to the GAYLETTER office is (after wiping a lot of sweat off my face) sit down and open Facebook like the good millennial I suppose I am. It’s always exciting to realize I have been awake for four hours and the morning’s news might as well be something that happened two weeks ago. So much happens when I am getting my beauty sleep! It’s really fascinating how time works. So cray-cray, right? There is always something new, exciting and stupid to read on Facebook. Yesterday was a little different though.

As Frank Ocean continues to teach us, disgruntled fans are not the look. Releasing new music is vital to taming your fandom. PWR BTTM knows how to treat their fans better than any other band. Liv Bruce and Ben Hopkins have had quite the year. We were thrilled to publish them in Issue 4 of GAYLETTER, and since featuring them in the mag, they’ve been written about by NPR, MTV, Pitchfork, and countless other major sources, all while on a major tour supporting the indie-emo fave, Pity Sex. Both members have extreme passion for inclusivity and spend the necessary time snapping photos with their glitter-clad fans after shows. They have an active (often politically charged) social media presence that keeps their fans engaged, interested and above all else, heard by the duo. Most importantly, they made sure every venue they played provided gender neutral restrooms for those attending their shows. PWR BTTM are queer crusaders but they never set out to be that. As Bruce says, “PWR BTTM is an average band.”

On Monday night, their record company, Father Daughter Records, teased a release on Twitter, citing a special something coming from the band Tuesday morning, at 10am. By 11am most major music outlets had covered PWR BTTM’s latest single, ‘New Hampshire.’ My Facebook feed was clogged with nothing but high praise (as usual) on the band’s new track, which was originally scrapped from their debut album Ugly Cherries and will be included on the UK release of the record.

“‘It’s a song about greener grass,” Hopkins tells NPR Music in an email. “I wrote it during a period of time where I hated where I lived and who I was there, and I just felt so helpless that I figured whenever I did inevitably wither away, the parties that be could ship me somewhere better. Reflecting on it, the hopelessness I felt was actually in me, and the place I was in or where I wanted to be couldn’t help things if I wasn’t willing to help myself first.’”

You can listen to the track on the band’s Soundcloud here.