The story for HARMS begins when Brooklyn-based artist Jake Harms was playing with his other band, What Moon Things, and began to get the urge to do something that was solely his and no one else’s.

The project HARMS started out as just a collection of songs that came from a foggy collection of journal entries, scrapped demos, and half-finished ideas that were left behind throughout the years. The end result is his new EP, Aquarium, and the final outcome makes incredible use of those forgotten pieces, turning them into something truly wonderful — mixing the goth grandeur of The Cure, and something more along the lines of straight indie-pop.

“Walking around the streets of the city felt like being at an aquarium,” shares Harms on the meaning behind Aquarium. “The pressure from millions of thoughts and bodies pushing against glass that just barely separates you from them. The sound and feeling are shaped by riding the subways in Brooklyn, hearing sirens, scrapes, voices filter in to the space in my arrangements, the space in my headphones.”

Today we are bringing you an exclusive taste of Aquarium, to the tune of his new song “Car Outside.” The song takes you on that dark indie-pop journey, to the scene of a jilted ex-lover waiting outside a house — potentially after an argument, an altercation of sorts, as the day slowly slips by and they are left on the outside.

“‘Car Outside’ is the first song I wrote for the Aquarium EP – started upstate in the woods, in Cold Spring, finished at my first apartment in Bushwick. In my mind, it’s a series of classic images — a chorus that asks someone for a chance at happiness, and an ending the asks an open-ended, unanswerable question. It plays like a series of fragmented movie scenes to me, like a Lynchian drama.”

Aquarium is set for release on November 30th via Good Eye Records, HARMS first for the label while also serving as the eleventh for the label.

You can keep up with HARMS on Facebook and Instagram.

Aquarium track-listing:

  1. Lose
  2. Pop Song
  3. Aquarium
  4. Car Outside
  5. My Body Loses Shape
  6. Fire