Brooklyn-via-Vancouver shoegaze band smush have announced their second album, i’ll always wish,,, due January 22, 2027. Emily Borrowman, Atley King, Rudi Neubrander and Wilson Woods recorded the album in Austin with Jackson Baker of witches exist.
Lead single “milkweed butterfly” pushes the band’s hazy guitar sound into more restless territory, layering jungle breakbeats and drum-and-bass-inspired programming with glitchy vocals, noise-rock abrasion and shoegaze texture. Atley King says the song grew from Borrowman’s experience of childhood anxiety and depression during the instability of immigrating to the United States.
The nine-song album follows smush’s 2024 debut if you were here i’d be home by now and 2026 covers EP standards, expanding the band’s palette while Borrowman writes about girlhood, grief and lost innocence. Watch “milkweed butterfly” below.