Wasps is absolutely our goofiest soNg to date.

Back in 2019, we spent the first week of July in a cabin in the middle of Daniel Boone National Forest (which is in Kentucky, by the way). We were extremely isolated—our cabin was in the middle of the forest with no surrounding houses to be seen. The driveway was long and steep and untrustworthy and made of gravel. We were completely alone… except for the bugs. The wasps’ nest on the front of our house was particularly terrorizing, and we had several run-ins with bees’ foulest cousins. Everything came to a head one day when I got stung by a wasp, and after finally figuring out how to keep them at bay, we celebrated. Jamie, our drummer, had a long night full of whiskey and vocoders, and out of that long night came the hook for this song. When it came time to record it, we knew it was special and we wanted to treat it as such. We went out to the Recording Workshop in Chillicothe, Ohio and recorded this thing to tape in a studio built in the 1970s (our first song to tape). The hook was sung remotely by a choir of friends (shoutout to the Wasps choir; all of us plus Sydney Boggs, Chelsea Raven, Amy Gadd, Savannah Merriman, Andy Clingman, and Aaliyah Lashaun).

Lyrically, we felt that this one fit into the spring leg of the record as well. It’s about, well, climate change (more specifically, my fear of it), and it fits into a jangly indie-pop sonic space not dissimilar to Paul Simon’s Graceland. From here, things are only going to get hotter…