Bethlehem Steel Unpack Numbness On “Alt Shells”

"Don’t just focus/ On empty space/ As if waiting for something to grow/ Would you just stare/ At your own empty chest?" wails Becca Ryskalczyk of Brooklyn band Bethlehem Steel, on their new single, "Alt Shells." Taken from their forthcoming record, Party Naked Forever, "Alt Shells" is a rich, cathartic, soaring guitar-heavy track about depression, and trying really hard to feel something. It's full of self-deprecating, existential questions like, "Why do we create/ Our own importance when actually we don’t mean anything at all?" The message is that nothing matters — but this song fucking rules.

"It is basically an internal conversation based on an overloaded mental state," Ryskalczyk wrote to The FADER via email. "When you hit that wall of anxiety or depression and you can't get yourself to move or even feel anything. Like if the love of your life left you right then and you would still feel nothing. The overload is from taking on all of the pain and stress and fear of everyone around you. Holding it for them and not being able to let it go. Then thinking, 'Who are you to hold this? Nothing matters.'" Listen below.