If you haven’t heard already, New York’s Ra Ra Riot is gearing up to release a new album. Their fifth full length LP, Superbloom, is due out August 9th, and will be a decidedly pop-minded, eclectic and imaginative album that will draw on elements of psychedelia, new wave, pop-punk and country. Today, they’ve shared a video for the first single off that album, “Bad To Worse”. Inspired by a nine-hour road trip from Washington, D.C. to the outskirts of Cape Cod, as frontman Wes Miles said in a press release, “Bad To Worse” is a song about “watching the world from the window of the car or bus, and how there’s a familiarity to everything but it’s never the same as it once was.” And the video, quiet and and rolling, is equally as reflective, capturing each of the four both on the road, and in the places where they felt the most introspective. Watch below.
 

“Each of us did a few shots indoors in what we felt was a version of each of our mind palaces: [bassist Mathieu Santos] in a quiet library, [guitarist Milo Bonacci] in front of a wall of amps, [violinist Rebecca Zeller] singing in the bathroom with glitching flowers, [drummer Kenny Bernard] on a moped, and me sitting drinking tea,” Miles explains. “Those abstract elements and the hard truck imagery meet together in the end to reveal the inside of our album art: the bit-crushed volcanic mountain behind all the fields of flowers.”

“The story of the song (and a lot of this record, too) is partly about driving, particularly in trucks,” Miles says. “I always thought it was cool to take a road trip in a utilitarian vehicle like that. So there’s a lot of driving of that beautiful old Chevy in this video.”

Ra Ra Riot will be doing just that— driving— as they continue on the road supporting Third Eye Blind and Jimmy Eat World on their Summer Gods tour, which will keep them all busy through early August. The group will also be crossing the pond for a couple of European shows in December, dates/tickets here.

Ra Ra Riot’s Superbloom will be out August 9th via Rob The Rich Recordings/Caroline. You can pre-order the album here.

 

Superbloom Tracklist: 
01. Flowers
02. Bad to Worse
03. Belladonna
04. Endless Pain/Endless Joy
05. War & Famine
06. Bitter Conversation
07. This Time of Year
08. Gimme Time
09. Backroads
10. Dangerous
11. An Accident
12. A Check for Daniel