smush

i’ll always wish,, is the second album from Brooklyn-based smush, following their 2024 debut if you were here i’d be home by now and the 2026 covers EP standards. The nine-song record arrives January 22, 2027 and pushes the band’s shoegaze sound into stranger rhythmic territory without losing the melodic pull at its center.

Emily Borrowman and Atley King wrote the material with a deliberately stripped-back approach, often beginning with guitar-only songs and minimal demos before building them out in the studio. The album was recorded in Austin with Jackson Baker of witches exist, where those simple foundations were expanded through dense guitars, electronic processing and detailed production.

Lead single “milkweed butterfly” captures the shift particularly well, combining pop melody with drum-and-bass-inspired programming, jungle breakbeats, glitchy vocals, shoegaze guitars and noise-rock texture. Across the album, Borrowman’s lyrics look back on girlhood, grief, lost innocence and the instability of major life changes, while the music gives smush room to stretch beyond the boundaries of their debut.