The Head’s latest offering is a dreamy power ballad with big splashes of guitar flanger and boomy drums. It’s the kind of music that recalls the first ache of love as seen through the lens of John Hughes’ ‘80s pastel cinema. Musically, the song’s repeated bass figure gently sways between the first and fourth interval for the duration of the track. In the same way that a small feeling can whirl itself up into a full-blown personal crisis, the dynamic shuffling of these two notes firmly drive the song from your typical rock anthem into something more explosive. With “Oceans,” the Head firmly place themselves in the lineage of new wave heroes like the Cure, the Cars, and, more recently, the Killers.

Directed by Nick Rhodes of Coalesce Films, the video tells the story of disconnectedness and twenty-something party culture ennui. It captures the feeling of watching life happen to you instead of outright embracing it with the band members seemingly trapped at a party that never seems to stop. Throughout the track, Mike Shaw’s high tenor vocal reaches through the stratosphere with deeply emotional lyrics. Towards the end, however, the need for meaning falls away and his vocal disappears into a mercurial falsetto as the video shifts to footage of Shaw descending a staircase and exiting the Twilight Zone torture of a never-ending party.

Watch/listen above.

As the first single from the trio’s upcoming EP, we asked drummer Jack Shaw for some insight into how “Oceans” fits into the thematic context of the overall work and what we can expect from the band in the near future.

“The name of the record is What Happened to Us? (Vol. 1), the first volume of three EPs we’ll be releasing over the next few months,” he explains. “‘Oceans,’ in addition to the other songs on the EPs, was made at an introspective time for us as a band and as individuals. During any period of self-reflection it’s always normal to ask yourself, what happened, not in a negative way, but in an overarching way that allows you to pause and embrace everything that’s happened to you so far—both the good and the bad. It’s healthy to ask that question every once in a while, and that’s a question we asked ourselves not only during the recordings of the tracks, but also during the making of the video for ‘Oceans.'”

What Happened to Us? (Vol. 1) is out Oct. 11.

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Bandcamp: thehead.bandcamp.com
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Twitter: @theheadmusic