Here’s one of the best press release leads I’ve seen in a while: “pink balloons went pop, and now everything’s in black and white.” Ekko Astral, the Washington, D.C. punks who broke out with 2024’s pink balloons, have announced their sophomore album. It’s called the beltway is burning, and it’s out April 22. The dancey, discombobulating lead single, ‘lil xan goes to washington’, comes paired with an Alec Pugliese-directed music video. Check it out and find the album artwork and tracklist below.
“In times when Nicki Minaj is tight with the president, it feels right that Lil Xan becomes a lobbyist,” the band’s Liam Hughes said in a statement. “This song was pulled out of thin air in the studio while most of the album was written and ready to record beforehand. We only had the lyrics finished for this one. But once we started messing around, the music wrote itself in mintues, and we all knew we had something special.”
Jael Holzman: “We always intended for the songs on this album to tell a fictional story based on real events. Some of this material dates back a decade to when Liam and I first met in college. But by the time we hit the studio, we had a feeling it would be more like a historical document.” Holzman has also published a personal essay accompanying the announcement via Medium.
The beltway is burning was written and recorded by Holzman, Hughes, and Miri Tyler, who, as the band recently announced, is leaving the project. Featuring the previously released single ‘Horseglue’, the album was produced by Jeremy Snyder and mastered by Carl Saff.
Revisit our Artist Spotlight interview with Ekko Astral.
the beltway is burning Cover Artwork:
the beltway is burning Tracklist:
1. body generation
2. lil xan goes to washington
3. horseglue
4. beltway [feat. pop music fever dream]
5. wmata
6. this is not a call to action but a lamentation on the situation
at hand (or capital riot)
7. elegy for a system [feat. big girl]
8. lovesick american romance
9. dude with guitars
10. sandler ’36
11. blood mountain
12. comet ping pong
