Nothing else sounds like Drag Talk. On their debut album,Drink The Ocean,the L.A. band finds gauzy beauty in the fathomless chaos that surrounds us,their exquisite shoegaze guitars and Britpop melodicism skewed with JuttyTaylor’s genre-fluid vocals.Harnessing ‘90s indie nostalgia to here-and-now emotional responses, DragTalk’s lush atmospherics, spacious beats, and hugely emotive hooks createsomething singular yet accessible and authentic. “I feel like we’re hardcorepunk dudes who love Oasis,” offered guitarist Ross O’Carroll, whose pandemichome demos were the germ of the band in 2021.Drag Talk is a coming-together of like-minded friends with long, intertwinedhistories. O’Carroll and fellow guitarist Matt Ripp Bennett grew up together inHawaii but had somehow never been in the same band. Taylor and drummerHayden Scott (Awolnation, Paramore) were longtime bandmates in Grammy-winning Swedish rock band Ghost. Third guitarist (yes, there are three) NeilPopkin played alongside Bennett in War Tapes, and even the band’s producer,Tom Syrowski (The Killers, Mastodon, Pearl Jam), has been in their circle sincethe aughts.Drag Talk released their debut single, “Egyptian Flesh” in 2022 and theDogsEP the following year. By the time they dropped follow-up EP Rosy Crown in2024, they’d earned a cult following evidenced by sell-out shows on bothcoasts and a deal with MNRK Music Group. Due in September 2026,Drink TheOceanemerged from a period of personal tumult that almost broke the band,the album’s very existence a bittersweet act of defiance.