NYC’s cultural commentators BODEGA return today with their latest single, “City Is Taken,” a song that further displays the true ambition and heart of their upcoming third album, Our Brand Could Be Yr Life (Chrysalis Records), coming April 12, 2024. Pre-order here.

Tender, melodic, and with a narrative about the band’s relationship to gentrification, it shows a different side to their upcoming record, and indeed the band, one that widens their growing sonic palette ever further, offering up a cohesive, moreish set of songs that are both stylistically diverse and irresistibly anthemic.

Nikki Belfiglio, joint lead vocalist of BODEGA, and the lead on “City Is Taken,” had the following to say about the themes behind their new single:

“‘City Is Taken’ is a song about my experience of moving to NYC in 2010. I came to view myself and my artistic role models as a force of gentrification caught in the invisible web on profiteering that follows artists wherever they go. My visual presence became an unwitting symbol of destruction; the antithesis of everything I sought to create.”

“City Is Taken” is accompanied by a video from director Luca Balser that features Ben Hozie and Nikki performing the track throughout a nocturnal NYC in front of defunct venues from the city’s storied musical past alongside the commercial banks and chain restaurants of today. The video works as a study of personal geography and archeology, unearthing the band’s New York story up to now.

BODEGA’s Ben says of the video:

“It starts in front of what was Goodbye Blue Monday, where I played my first show in the city way back in 2009. The camera frames key DIY spots in BODEGA’s history such as Party Expo, Palisades (where the release party for the original ‘Our Brand Could Be Your Life’ happened in 2015), Silent Barn II, Sunnyvale (where the ‘Endless Scroll’ release party was) Shea Stadium, Death by Audio, 285 Kent, Glasslands, Monster Island, Aviv, and Cake Shop plus some classic punk spots from before our time such as Mercer Arts Center, Palladium, Tier 3, Mudd Club, and Max’s Kansas City – the track references Patti Smith’s recent dictum that young NYC artists should ‘pack (their) bags and move to Detroit’.”