Bay Area quartet SWMRS have announced that their debut album Drive North is due for release on February 12, 2016 via Uncool Records. Noisey broke the news on Friday and premiered the band’s new single “Figuring it Out,” praising the track as a “poppy foot-tapper filled with skate-gang vocals.”
Listen to “Figuring It Out.”

Recorded in the band’s hometown of Oakland, CA, Drive North was produced by FIDLAR frontman Zac Carper. “I wanted to work with SWMRS right when I heard their demos. And the way they all work together as a band is really inspiring. You can tell they have been friends since they were children,” commented Carper on the collaboration.
“This is very much a coming of age record. It holds within the title one of the most important realizations that we had growing up. We spent a lot of time in our early years trying to find our creative roots, envying Los Angeles and wishing we could be from where ‘the scene is happening’,” offered singer Cole Becker on the album’s lyrical content. Elaborating on the inspiration for the album’s title, Becker shared, “Drive North is a sort of battlecry for everywhere else in the world where kids are making rock and roll music. Its about cultivating your own creativity within the world that you live in and basking in your individual identity.”
Drive North will feature previously released tracks “Miley” and “Uncool.” i-D Magazine premiered “Miley” in September, praising the song as “the most punk tribute to Miley Cyrus ever.” The band’s DIY music video for the track can be seen HERE.
The album will also feature an abridged version of “Harry Dean,” a previously 17-minute epic the band originally recorded to soundtrack Saint Laurent Paris’s Spring/Summer 2016 presentation. Having discovered SWMRS during their blistering performance at Burgerama IV, Saint Laurent creative director Hedi Slimane shot portraits of the band before commissioning a piece of music and asking members of the band to walk in his Paris runway show.
In September, SWMRS wrapped a U.S. tour supporting Wavves and Twin Peaks. Praising the band’s energetic Seattle performance, tastemaker independent radio station KEXP offered, “Part pop punk, part ruthless west coast surf, SWMRS are just what the kids need, and we’ll be seeing them again real soon.” Last month, the band shared the main-stage of Orange County’s influential Beach Goth music festival with Grimes, Mac Demarco, Ghost, and The Drums. SWMRS will be announcing U.S. tour dates shortly.