Listen to Summer Cannibals’ Defiant, Rebellious New Single “Behave”

Ahead of the release of their forthcoming album Can’t Tell Me No, Summer Cannibals have released the defiance-filled track “Behave.”

Preaching liberation, opposition and a sticking-it-to-the-man motto, “Behave” is a powerhouse single supercharged with angst.. Though the track is sonically upbeat, the roaring guitar, frontwoman Jessica Boudreaux’s vocals, and the brooding lyrics create a melancholic hopelessness and desperation. Boudreaux sings, “What if I don’t say the things that I’m feeling? / Will it make you go away?”

Boudreaux rewrote the track—and the band’s entire album—after getting out of a manipulative and controlling relationship.

“I wrote this song very early in that relationship, not totally realizing what I was writing about,” Boudreaux told NYLON. “Coming out of that toxic environment and revisiting this song felt unreal, and it now feels really empowering to hear and perform—a reminder to myself that I will not behave for or bend to another person’s unrealistic expectations of me again.”

Taking back her personal and creative freedom, Can’t Tell Me No is a testament to giving yourself that sense of relief and self-worth. Taking the darkness of that relationship and creating some light from it in the form of the album, Can’t Tell Me No is “about finding love and acceptance on the other side of pain,” as a press release explains.

“Can’t Tell Me No stands up not just to a relationship or an industry, but to the people and constructs that have been trying to silence women and hold them down for so long,” the release continues.

Listen to Summer Cannibals’ “Behave” below, revisit the band’s 2015 Daytrotter Session further down and read Paste’s full review of Can’t Tell Me No here.