Mamalarky Announces New Album Hex Key

On April 11, tri-coastal indie quartet Mamalarky will release Hex Key, their Epitaph Records debut. The record is their official follow-up to Pocket Fantasy, a project where Mamalarky made “a place for themselves among those rare acts who can revel in their musical oddness while sounding graceful somehow.” The announcement of Hex Key comes on the heels of two singles, including 2024 single “Nothing Lasts Forever,” a song with a melody that oozes and crawls like a body stuck to a hot blacktop, sounding as humid as it does tranquil. And then, earlier this winter, the band released “Feels So Wrong,” an absurdly catchy song “embodying hope that can be found in hopelessness,” and “the right to be found in the overwhelming wrong.”

Hex Key will also feature today’s new single, the very good and dashingly percussive “#1 Best of All Time.” Bandleader Livvy Bennett says, “I was writing some of my favorite music ever, but it didn’t feel how I expected it to,” she says. “I still didn’t have it all figured out. So I wrote songs like ‘Feels So Wrong,’ and ‘#1 Best of All Time’ as a way of telling myself what I needed to hear.”

She continues, “Through a lot of games of UNO I’ve discovered I’m actually a pretty competitive person. And somehow, the feeling of losing has become highly motivating to me. I always feel like I’m competing against myself, trying to best my last attempt at whatever I’ve set out to do. Like, you probably can’t be the best of all time, but you’ll always be the best you of all time–no one can dispute that. I wanted to write something that felt powerful but funny, too, like laughing in the face of doubt. Cause betting on yourself even when you feel like a losing horse pays off in big ways! If you can make yourself feel like you’re winning right at the moment of failure and only measure yourself against your own barometers, you’re gonna be a lot happier.”

Listen to “#1 Best of All Time” and check out the Hex Key album artwork and tracklist below.