Hand Habits, the project of Los Angeles-based musician Meg Duffy (they/them), has shared a video for “No Difference,” the new single from their upcoming album, Fun House, available for pre-order now and due 10/22 via Saddle Creek.  

Fun House is Duffy’s most ambitious Hand Habits album to date. Produced by Sasami Ashworth(SASAMI) and engineered by Kyle Thomas (King Tuff), the record was not intended as a reaction to the pandemic, but it was very much the result of taking a difficult, if much-needed, moment of pause. Emboldened by going into therapy and coaxed by Ashworth to push the songs into unexpected new shapes, the resulting music is more acutely personal and stylistically adventurous than anything you’ve heard from Hand Habits before.

While Fun House shares some of the same hallmarks as previous Hand Habits releases —a kind of outré queer sensibility, a gentle sense of vulnerability — the record is a marked sonic departure from the often muted tones of 2019’s Placeholder and 2017’s Wildly Idle (Humble Before the Void). Instead, the tracks on Fun House sparkle, moving in unexpected directions and eschewing any specific genre, packaging narratives about loss, romantic longing, and childhood trauma inside polished synth-pop next to tracks with a ragged, Neil Young quality. The push/pull of styles, paired with songs that move deftly between the present and past, give the record a wildly diverse, hall of mirrors quality that befits its name. Where previous Hand Habits records could be fairly insular affairs, both in their creation and their execution, Fun House feels ebullient, lush, a fully-realized conversation. 

Photo Courtesy: Jacob Boll