Bats & Mice emerges from a 12-year slumber recently sharing “Buried Just Beyond” from their forthcoming PS: Seriously. LP (Lovitt Records).

In 2012, two of the founding members of the seminal punk trio Bats & Mice stepped into the studio to start work on their follow-up to 2010’s Back In Bat EP. Then, between babies and careers, life happened, and the project went dark for almost a decade.

Bats & Mice is a band that has quietly crept through the music world. Three members of Sleepytime Trio originally formed the band: Jonathan Fuller (Engine Down, Denali), Dave NeSmith (Rah Bras, Committees) and Ben Davis (Milemarker, Committees). They began writing songs together in a new style that pursued their hardcore roots coupled with a more dark and winding sense of melody. However, the music still maintained the energy and drive of their previous efforts. This line-up produced Bats & Mice’s first work, a self-titled EP released on Lovitt Records in the fall of 2000, to critical acclaim.

Friends Daron Hollowel and Ash Bruce from the band 400 Years joined for a stint in which ‘Bats’ wrote and released the full-length album entitled, Believe It Mammals, on Lovitt in the spring of 2002. That line-up toured to support the LP across the U.S., playing with Fugazi, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, 90 Day Men, Denali, and Gregor Samsa.

In 2004, Luke Herbst joined the band on drums, and the band toured Europe in support of a new EP titled A Person Carrying a Handmade Paper Bag is Considered as a Royal Person. Jonathan Fuller rejoined the group and helped write and record the Back In Bat EP, released in 2010.

Soon after, Mark Oates (from Wailin’ Storms) took over the drums for Jonathan and helped write new songs as the band headed into the studio to record the basic tracks for an LP in 2012.  

In early 2023, the band reconvened in Chapel Hill North Carolina’s Warrior Sound to rework the original tracking and finish a 10-song full-length record PS: Seriously. The album will be released on May 31, 2024.

Photo by Kent Corley