It’s wild that the smash rooms aren’t booming with business these days. Everyone’s on edge, forever ready to throw hands, and one minor inconvenience thrusts otherwise chill folx into a blind rage. But a controlled and coordinated release of the tension that grips us is quite necessary to get through this cursed timeline, and Lonely Little Kitsch have released a sensational soundtrack to help address frustrations in ways that won’t get us arrested.
The Canadian duo of Kristen Goetz and Nolan Jodes last month unleashed a soaring dose of alt-rock catharsis in “Puncture Wounds,” where the uneven urgency of the times is met with a relative calm outlook. And using a smash room as the visual for the official lyric video opens a mental portal into our own headspace as we doomscroll the day away.
“It’s a song about dissociating, and wanting to feel numb,” says Goetz. “When something is too painful or your emotions are overwhelming, you’d rather just shut down and feel nothing at all.”
This anthemic display of moody, introspective yearning, fueled by a juxtaposition of razor-sharp guitarwork that can pierce mountains and a confident comfort in vocal delivery to sooth the valley below, is destined to appear on more than a few Best of 2025 lists later this month. It sets up Lonely Little Kitsch’s forthcoming debut album as a must-hear, due out early next year on their own indie record label, Swear Word Records.
The gripping “Puncture Wounds” takes the angst and frustration of our daily living experience and filters the emotion into something blissful and beautiful. Hell, it might even be the SOTY — in both its sonic grandeur and its ability to harness our collective anxiety into something we can recognize and confront.
“It started out as an early 2000s emo-style song (almost comically so) that Nolan and I randomly wrote at 1 a.m. one night,” Goetz adds. “But over time it evolved into something with a bit more punch, and a slightly frenetic feel. More our style.”
And a true sign of the times. Smash it up below.