Texas Indie Band late night drive home Share New EP ‘i'll remember you for the same feeling you gave me as i slept’ Out Today Via Epitaph
Ahead of their recently announced Coachella performances this Spring, today indie rock four-piece late night drive home release their new EP ‘i'll remember you for the same feeling you gave me as i slept’ via Epitaph Records.
Formed in El Paso, TX in 2019, lead singer Andre Portillo, guitarist Juan "Ockz" Vargas, bassist Freddy Baca and drummer Brian Dolan have quickly gained a cult following of over 1 Million monthly listeners charmed by their penchant for nostalgia. Named one of AltPress’ 24 Artists To Watch In 2024, the outlet praises the band for “reinventing indie music for a modern age while increasing representation for Latin artists in the genre”.
For their label debut, the Texas natives looked to 90’s grunge staples such as Sonic Youth and Smashing Pumpkins to incorporate heavier sounds, while also infusing the modern influences of Dominic Fike and The 1975. Pairing droning shoegazey sonics with dark and introspective lyricism, late night drive home is the band of your angsty indie-rock dreams.
‘i'll remember you for the same feeling you gave me as i slept’
Self-produced by the band themselves and mixed by Sonny Diperri (The Drums, Animal Collective), late night drive home connected with engineer Ross Ingram (The Black Angels) in search of a darker sound, resulting in the grungy vibe of lead single “Believe Me (Even If I’m Lying)”. From there, the idea of using open D tuning for most of the EP was born as the band explains, “We wanted a cohesive sound between all songs while incorporating the cold, sad feeling of a winter EP.”
The writing and recording process for ‘i'll remember you for the same feeling you gave me as i slept’ allowed the band’s members to talk about the changes they were each going through individually. When coming down from the high of their first national tour, a veil of uncertainty had been following Ockz as a nomadic lifestyle had led him to pack up and move five times in the last three years. He was able to redirect this frenzied headspace with the racing instrumentals heard on the EP. Meanwhile, Andre (vocals) wanted to explore feelings of isolation and purgatory within the lyrics. Bleeding with a cry for help, he paints a picture of what it’s like to be trapped with your thoughts all day, echoing some of the battles he was dealing with mentally.
The origins of late night drive home began when Portillo and Ockz learned how to play their instruments while simultaneously learning how to produce music. When 2020 hit, the two best friends spent their time together uploading their work on SoundCloud and as they started to gain momentum online, Ockz recruited Baca, his cousin, who learned how to play the bass in order to join the band, and their longtime friend Brian Dolan on drums. On one fateful day in 2021, they released their hit song “Stress Relief” on all streaming platforms and their lives were forever changed. “Stress Relief” accumulated over 100M streams across all platforms, which resulted in a milestone record deal with Epitaph Records.
late night drive home are stopping at nothing while also remembering their roots growing up in rural America. Take a journey with this youthful indie band as they evolve their sound and find new ways of approaching the indie rock genre; just being able to create art is enough for them.