After teasing the song on social media for the last few months, London-based foursome Stereo Honey are premiering their new single “Don’t Speak,” exclusively on Billboard today (June 28).
“’Don’t Speak’ is us embracing a more direct way of writing songs. We are very much enjoying writing singles at the moment as there is no holding back,” lead vocalist Pete Restrick tells Billboard. The need to be delivering brutally immediate music that hooks people on the first listen is very exhilarating.”
With “Don’t Speak,” the band does just that, hooking listeners right from the start with raw vocals and anthemic beats that slowly kick in, leading to an explosive chorus that perfectly emotes the internal struggle that it captures.
“’Don’t Speak’ is a song written from depression’s point of view,” explains Restrick. “A man lies alone, locked in some kind of terrible limbo, neither able to dream, nor able to wake up, neither able to live, but unable to die. His body carries its own twisted life force, like a heartbeat that continues on despite the body having already depreciated.”
“From the outside his body is still, but a battle rages inside of him,” he continues. “It comes in waves, crushing and obliterating everything in sight. And every time it leaves it takes a little piece of him with it. He cannot remember when he opened the doorway and let it in, but now that the door is unlocked he cannot close it again no matter how hard he braces the edges. Through this doorway a spark has ignited and has started a fire, that burns but never leaves.”
Having only released their debut song “Where No One Knows Your Name” early last year, the act has been busy following that up with new songs such as “The Heart” and “What Makes a Man,” as well as their Monuments EP, which dropped this past December.
You can listen to “Don’t Speak,” which is out tomorrow via LAB Records, below.
Stereo Honey have also shared a first look at the song’s music video, which will be released in mid-July, with the below photograph. Speaking of the video, writer and director GattMoff tells Billboard, “The aim was to create a film that gave life to the song’s meaning. The song plays with the theme of depression, visually represented in the liquid filled piano…I hope people take from it what they will.”