₩€$€₦ pen ode to "being angry with technology on a beach"

They were the first band we saw at last year’s Iceland Airwaves festival in Reykjavík and they left a pleasant and lingering taste in the synapses. When we asked Júlía to describe the band’s sound to us late last year she replied: “imagine two people who've been playing in various types of rock bands for years and they're kind of lazy and tired of lugging around amps but also wanna try something new so they try to teach themselves to make electronic music.”

Ahead of their appearance at this year’s Airwaves and their upcoming debut album Wall of Pain, ₩€$€₦ have offered up “Beach Boys” a song they wrote mostly through improvisations at band practice. “[It’s] not as carefully planned out as some of the those tracks on Wall of Pain, but none the worse for it,” Júlía tells us.

The title came from a synth patch which sounded like waves crashing on the beach but the song’s actually about technology rage. “The lyrics were written while I was feeling very angry about digital communications and archiving a lot of weird Facebook conversations I wanted to forget,” says Júlía . “Thus both song and video concept were born: being angry with technology on a beach.”

The clip’s director Thoracious Appotite (not, we think, his real name) explains the concept further “I put Júlía and Loji on this desert island to emphasise the feelings of loneliness and isolation and I used these slow meandering camera movements and cross fades to reflect on an atmosphere of detachment.”

Also inspired by video artist Máni Sigfússon’s use of 3D in GANGLY’s recent “Holy Grounds”, Appotite sought to ‘plunge head first’ into CGI. “I thought the artifice of it made a great compliment to the themes of digital alienation,” he tells us.

The track was mixed by Árni Rúnar Hlöðverson of legendary Reykjavík electro-pop outfit FM Belfast. "[He] made us sound good," Júlía says. "Nothing would make sense without him!"