Watch And The Kids’ Sparkling Indie-Rock Set in the Paste Studio

Northampton, Massachusetts indie-rockers And The Kids are set to release their third full-length album, When This Life is Over, on Feb. 22 via Signature Sounds. To promote the release, they stopped by the Paste Studio this week to perform three tracks from it—”2003,” “Butterfingers” and “No Way Sit Back.”

Frontwoman Hannah Mohan’s towering, versatile vocals pervade each of these tracks, complimenting the innate grace and altruism of the band’s ethos. “No Way Sit Back” is a clear album standout and Mohan’s gliding chorus vocals are a life-affirming manifestation of the human spirit. The song takes aim at the heteronormative society and media that keeps LGBTQ voices in the shadows (“The world was never made for us”). Another cut “Butterfingers” centers on a twisting guitar riff and an interstellar synth line as Mohan tries to arouse her own wave of kind-hearted clamor to block out life’s unnecessary racket (“That’s why I sing loud / Hoping we can drown it out”).

The three-piece band performed the session without one of their members, Megan Miller (synthesizers, percussion), who was deported to Canada in 2014, but they had a special guest join Mohan and drummer Rebecca Lasaponaro in the Paste Studio—their pet chihuahua and album cover subject, Little Dog. The cover of When This Life Is Over features a black and white portrait of Little Dog, styled as a nod to the cover art of Angel Olsen’s My Woman and representing “the scrappy ingenuity at the heart of the band.”

Watch And The Kids’ full Paste Studio session below. You can preorder When This Life is Over via Bandcamp here.