Young Prisms Announce New Album "Drifter", Share "Honeydew" Video

Today, San Francisco band Young Prisms return with the announcement of their first full-length album in nearly 10 years, Drifter, due March 25th via Fire Talk. Produced by Shaun Durkan [Weekend, Soft Kill], the twelve-track album finds steadiness in the embrace of uncertainty, where Young Prisms explore the tension and release that comes with bringing your head down from the clouds to make sense of the tangible entanglements that make up everyday existence.

Coupled with the album announcement, Young Prisms share lead single and video for "Honeydew." The upbeat track rings in a new sonic era for the band following their sabbatical. Directed by band member Giovanni Betteo and starring vocalist Stefanie Hodapp, the "Honeydew" video was shot in one take with no cuts and was inspired by the filmmakers Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard.

Speaking on the inspiration for the single, vocalist Stefanie Hodapp says, "Growing up, my grandmother would tell me that honeydew was her favorite melon. I was never fully convinced. I usually preferred cantaloupe and quite frankly thought she was full of shit because everyone knows cantaloupe tastes better. Clearly this was more of a pitch to her unwilling granddaughter. 'Honeydew' (the song) is about looking back on life and wishing for more, as if it wasn’t right or good enough. Hoping for a time machine to change history. Somehow that stubborn grandmother analogy makes sense now. A honeydew life won't ever be a cantaloupe life, but it's okay and can be just as satisfying if you accept it for what it is."

WATCH: the video for Young Prism's "Honeydew" on YouTube

Comprised of Stefanie Hodapp (vocals, synthesizer), Matthew Allen (vocals, guitar, bass, synthesizer, drum programming), Giovanni Betteo (bass, guitar, synthesizer, drum programming) and Jordan Silbert (drums), Young Prisms have gone through an evolution of tough love and resilient perseverance. Betteo and Allen first started playing music together in middle school, eventually leading to the first iteration of Young Prisms in 2009, and the release of a self-titled EP on esteemed indie tastemaker Mexican Summer followed by two full lengths (2011’s Friends For Now and 2012’s In Between) on Kanine Records. Coming of age during a time where the band’s blend of introspective shoegaze and gauze-laden guitar earned them tours with bands like the Radio Dept, Dum Dum Girls, A Place to Bury Strangers and Moon Duo, Young Prisms never quite reached the same heights of commercial success afforded to some of their peers. In between, life happened: Hodapp and Betteo experienced the highs and lows of a romantic relationship, complete with raising a child together, and Silbert moved across the country from San Francisco to New York, where he currently resides. The band never officially broke up, but took some much-needed space that would make possible their eventual return that, when the timing was right, proved more essential than ever before.

Shoegaze itself has gone through its own sort of rebirth in the past decade, with a new generation finding inspiration through the heavy reverb and all-encompassing emotive textures that present a lens left-field of emo (which has seen a similar resurgence in recent years) that remains both engaging and poignantly affective. It became clear the music they made stretched further than the course they’d assumed their band had run and with this renewed outlook were able to reimagine the impact of their trajectory. From a wiser place the band reset those expectations with the romance of possibility, and entered the studio for the first time in nearly a decade.