Exclusive: Listen to Pom Pom Squad’s New Single “Red With Love”

Exclusive: Listen to Pom Pom Squad’s New Single “Red With Love”

Brooklyn-based rockers Pom Pom Squad share their latest single with Paste just in time for Valentine’s Day, “Red With Love,” along with a tinsel and glitter-bombed music video.

“Red With Love” is reminiscent of Soccer Mommy and Patience-era Mannequin Pussy, but it also holds its own. Pom Pom Squad frontwoman Mia Berrin’s wry, breathy vocals add an extra layer of charm and grit to the song, which perfectly contrasts the haute designer dresses Berrin wears in the video and the gleam of pom poms strewn around the crowd.

“A funny thing happened—after performing, writing and recording songs that are mostly about my depression for the last few years, I started to feel really really good,” Berrin tells Paste of the song. “Which isn’t to say that I don’t still deal with the darker parts of my brain, but it posed an interesting writing challenge. ‘Red With Love’ is my first proper love song and a pretty unguarded look into my heart, my relationship anxiety, and my acceptance of my own queerness.”

Pom Pom Squad’s 2019 debut EP Ow also incorporated the rebel cheerleader aesthetic, with a grungy, inextricably punk sound. At the core of Pom Pom Squad is inverting the normalized conventions of what it means to be a woman, to be queer, to grapple with identity.

Recently, Pom Pom Squad put out a cover of FKA Twig’s “Cellophane,” which was a slow, moody rendition of the song that starts with sparse guitar and breathy vocals before exploding into an even-keeled ballad.

We recently featured Pom Pom Squad on our list of the 15 New York City bands you need to know in 2020, with Paste’s Lizzie Manno praising the quartet as “fine purveyors of rough-edged indie rock” who combine Berrin’s “often painfully vulnerable songwriting [with] gnarled guitars.”

Watch the Paste-exclusive video below—you can pre-save “Red With Love” on Spotify here. Further down, check out their new song’s single art (photo by Sammy Ray Nelson) and see if Pom Pom Squad will be stopping near you on their upcoming tour.

RedWithLove-Sammy Ray Nelson-SingleArt.jpeg

Pom Pom Squad Tour Dates:

February
26 – San Francisco, Calif. @ Noise Pop Festival w/ Rosie Tucker

March
13-22 – Austin, Texas @ SXSW

April
04 – Chicago, Ill. @ Schubas Tavern w/ Disq
06 – Detroit, Mich. @ PJ’s Lager House w/ Disq
07 – Toronto, Ont. @ The Drake w/ Disq
09 – Boston, Mass. @ Great Scott w/ Disq
10 – New York, N.Y. @ Rough Trade w/ Disq
11 – Philadelphia, Pa. @ Boot & Saddle w/ Disq
12 – Washington, D.C. @ Songbyrd w/ Disq

 
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