Hot Joy Share New Song "Quality Control"

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Hot Joy recently signed with Tiny Engines and is unveiling its first slice of new music in 2025. Last year, the St. Louis band (Austin McCutchen, Nicole Bonura, Curt Ochsner, Wil McCarthy) put out one of our favorite EPs, Small Favor, which included the songs “Head Out of the Window” and “Folded Tongue.” Paste contributor Olivia Abercrombie wrote that the latter’s brevity “doesn’t leave much space for contemplation, but the fuzzed-out arrangement hits us in the gut with a standstill opening line: ‘Don’t separate the fact and fiction / I need it in the world right now.’ It’s a quick blast of grungy energy and brazen lyricism from a blossoming lo-fi band you ought to look out for.”

With Melina Duterte, whose 2017 Jay Som album Everybody Works topped our year-end list, now in the driver’s seat, Hot Joy is making scuzzy, syrupy noise-pop. “Quality Control” is the best thing they’ve done yet, its catchiness oozing out of every note. Hot Joy sounds perfectly juxtaposed, arriving with contemporary indie-rock sweetness and age-old distortion and singing about “navigating and overcoming social anxiety, about learning to sit with that discomfort and slowly embracing one’s true self.” The track is a double-single paired with “Leaning,” which will arrive in July.

Watch the music video for “Quality Control” below.

Premiere: Hot Joy Share New Song “Quality Control”

The track is a double-single paired with "Leaning," which will arrive in July via Tiny Engines.