Albany, New York’s Young Culture bursted onto the scene back in 2016 with their mini-album You. That release contains a song called “Bedroom Floor,” which features State Champs’ Derek DiScanio. The band followed up that release with their Blue EP, which was co-produced by DiScanio and Seth Henderson (Real Friends, Knuckle Puck, Sleep On It).

Following the release of Blue, Young Culture — comprised of vocalist Alex Magnan, guitarist Gabe Pietrafesa, drummer Nick Cavin, and guitarist Troy Burchett — decided that instead of working on new material for the band, they would experiment around a little bit. Pietrafesa began sending Magnan different beats to write lyric over to keep things fresh.

“A lot of our influences come from hip-hop and pop music,” explains Magnan. “That’s stuff that we really like. So Gabe was making beats and he sent me one and was like ‘You want to just try writing something over this?’ And I was like ‘Yeah, I’ll try it out’ and we ended up writing a bunch of songs.” “In the middle of writing all these other pop-punk songs,” says Pietrafesa, “I’d just send Alex a beat for fun so he could stay creative. And they just sounded kind of cool and we wanted to share it.”

The band took the collection of songs and released them under the moniker of YC. It was an important exercise for the band to complete in order to sharpen their skills for when it was time to return to work on new Young Culture material, which leads us to where we are today with the band.

Young Culture have signed with Equal Vision Records, and we are excited to be premiering  their first single with the label titled “Drift.” With the song — which was co-written with DiScanio — the band incorporated some production techniques from their YC project and use it to their advantage. Everything from the bands past bleeds through, every influence along the way, and the end result is an anthemic pop-rock song that will make a home inside your head.

Expanding on the new song, Magnan states that “‘Drift’ is the beginning of a new era for Young Culture. The song is about struggling to make ends meet with someone who doesn’t want something the same way you do. We’re very glad to be able to give you something genuine through hard times and hard work. We’re grateful to Equal Vision for being so incredible to with and to our fans who’ve been here from the very start. Thank you all for being a part of this journey.”

Make sure you check out “Drift” for yourself at the top of the post, and we’ll keep you updated along the way as this young band has a bright future ahead of them.