Song You Need: A post-punk anthem to kick yourself in the ass with

The FADER's "Songs You Need" are the tracks we can't stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.

We love our comfort, don't we? With more avenues than ever for getting stuck in an endless flood of dopamine, change becomes a four-letter word as we get swept away by the timelines. Paradoxically, we live in an age where it's abundantly clear that things cannot go on the way they have been. A collision course with oblivion has been set – are we wise enough to do the hard work of changing paths?

Crack Cloud, a post-punk group from Vancouver, make music for exorcising the sleep paralysis demon digging its hooves into our collective chests. Sions of the hell-raising angularity of Gang of Four, Crack Cloud displayed a freewheeling spontaneity on their wonderful 2020 project Pain Olympics. “Please Yourself," the first single from their upcoming album Tough Baby, is a blast of glam-rock swagger amidst bandleader Zach Choy's accusatory entreaties: "You're fucking around speaking of change / I don't think you really want change," he spits as the band swells with choral chanting and labyrinthine riffing.

Above, you can watch the song's equally beguiling and engaging music video. "The subtext of the video is really as follows," Choy says, "art is a mechanism for healing and discovery. You learn through it, and you grow with it. In our culture, we’re predisposed to quantifying art, to sanctioning it, and to manufacturing it. But underneath all of that, it is a form of living inquiry; it’s how we learn to unravel the extremities in life so that we may better understand ourselves, and each other."

Thumbnail photo by Fahim Kassam