Today, Toilet Rats delivers a passionate love letter to its city with the wild, weird anthem, “HEART EMOJI MPLS.” Toilet Rats is the project of Thomas Rehbein, an elusive Minneapolis-based character who allegedly records in a small studio somewhere beneath the city, surrounded by synthesizers, guitars, and fast food wrappers. Unable to receive reliable internet or television signals in the sewer, Rehbein collects discarded VHS tapes, audio cassettes, and yellowed brochures — which inform his sense of reality, his worldview, and, most importantly, his music. His thought process is not unlike flipping through daytime television channels circa 1983. He would almost certainly use the wrong fork while dining with visiting royalty.

The resulting sound is exactly what you’d expect from someone raised on found cassettes and underground plumbing acoustics: a reliably fun and noisy catalog five years deep, pulling from synth pop, post-punk, new wave, and whatever else washed down the drain. Black Cats, the newest LP dropping in June 2026, via Steadfast/Sweet Cheetah, arrives with 14 tracks and roughly 30 minutes of Toilet Rats at their most expansive.

Fuzz pedals, synthesizers, drum machines, distorted bass, and chorus pedals are all present and accounted for — alongside new wrinkles including moody ’80s college rock excursions nodding at The Wedding Present and pre-spiral Smiths, sitting comfortably next to punk scorchers and new wave dance floor numbers. Fans of Vision Video, Home Front, The Cure, New Order, Say Hi, and The Spits will feel right at home.

Recorded during a period of real disruption, Black Cats balances levity with vulnerability — moving between songs about ghouls and monsters, calamity and disaster, and heart-on-sleeve bops that land harder than expected. Standout “Shimmy,” mixed by Sean O’Keefe (Beach Bunny, Motion City Soundtrack, Fall Out Boy), is about surviving a major illness and dancing with friends afterward. “HEART EMOJI MPLS” is a love letter to Minneapolis for showing up for each other during a scary stretch of early 2026. The record features contributions from Adam Goren of Atom and His Package, Andrew Cahak of Unstable Shapes, saxophonist Daryk Narum, and a chorus of Minneapolis collaborators.