Summer’s back on where I live — after a couple weeks that felt like fall, suddenly it’s back to beach weather, and Better Joy‘s “Carnival” showed up just in time for it. This is perfect fair-weather music. Catchy, bright, melodic, memorable, I’ve woken up with this song stuck in my head two days running:

Better Joy is a relatively new artist. Their first single “Hard to Love” came out less than a year ago, and they’ve released four more since. Here’s a pretty good interview with Bria Keely, the voice of the band:

Our sound is jangly, crunchy, bright, energetic, dark at times and fun! We’ve been influenced sonically by The Cure, The Smiths, The Strokes and Phoebe Bridgers; the first three of these influences having particular distinct guitar sounds that we love and are hugely influenced by. I also particularly like the paradox of having very bright and upbeat instrumentals with lyrics that are a bit darker.

You can hear The Strokes pretty clear in another recent single, “Situations”. I love this song, and on their YouTube channel, there’s a fantastic piano and vocal performance of it. Here’s the commercial version:

Better Joy’s sound is uncommonly well-developed and polished for a band so new — the songs are different yet cohesive. Here’s “Talking Around”, from April of this year. It’s a much more guitar-forward, moodier sound than the singles above, but it’s still distinctively Better Joy:

They’ve gotten some good attention from the BBC and done lots of press. No word on whether there’s an EP or something larger coming soon, but they seem to have a lot of momentum.

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