“Not being able to walk away from a toxic relationship is a lot like being stuck on a difficult boss fight,” Bre Morell — one-half of crushed — says of their new song, “oneshot,” out today. “Running back over and over again, knowing that they will wreck you, but you can’t stop because the torture is somehow still fun. Like Sniper Wolf making her final plea to Solid Snake, ‘oneshot’ is about lying on the brink of death and begging to be put out of your misery.”
It’s a fitting analogy for a single from their Ghostly International debut called no scope, out Sept. 26, referring to a kill made with a sniper rifle at close range in video games. As they’ve detailed in past interviews, the duo are huge gamers, sinking hours into Elden Ring when they were writing and recording their extra life EP and bonding over Stardew Valley. Collaging dream pop, alt-rock, and beat-tape wooziness, the band have clearly leveled up with their upcoming album, running through their myriad influences — Portishead, Sneaker Pimps, the Sundays — without ever hinging too hard on the past.
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crushed will join Cafuné on their North American tour, starting a week before the release of no scope. It wraps with a show at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg on Oct. 22. See their tour routing here and the video for “oneshot,” which looks like GoldenEye infected with a hallucinogenic virus, below.