American Football have joined forces with Turnstile‘s Brendan Yates for new single ‘No Feeling’ – the latest from their upcoming album ‘(LP4)’.
The returning Midwest emo heroes are gearing up to release their fourth studio album on May 1 via Polyvinyl, and it will be their first record in seven years.
In February they shared the eight-minute sprawling epic ‘Bad Moons’ as the lead single, and today (Wednesday April 8) they have dropped another taster which sees them team up the Turnstile frontman.
Centred around ethereal, shimmering synths, melodic guitar riffs and captivating vocal melodies, the track sees American Football singer Mike Kinsella harmonise with Yates as they build towards the airy chorus: “No feeling/ No pain/ No one to blame/ Forever awaits/It’s just an eternal blank page.”
”Brendan came into the studio to sing along to a ‘gang vocal’ call-and-response part I’d written for the chorus of No Feeling’,” Kinsella said, revealing that he had initially planned for the feature to be “one of many voices” and hidden as an “easter egg” for fans.
“But after tracking the original parts, he asked if he could try a higher harmony that he was hearing. As soon as he started singing it, all of our jaws dropped, and we all were looking at each other like ‘Oh shit! That’s the dude from Turnstile!’” the singer continued.
“His voice is so singular, and once he sang the part in his range, it was clear that the part now belonged to him and him alone.”
The track also comes with an entrancing music video, which shows ghost-like creatures aboard a sunken ship, dancing and celebrating their last moments before a submarine finds them underwater.
“Our goal with music videos is to tell a story that captures what we think and feel while listening to the song,” directors Cady Buche and Travis Barron explained. “When we listened to ‘No Feeling’ for the first time, we thought a lot about mysterious places like outer space and the bottom of the ocean—they’re beautiful and they also kind of freak you out.”
“The music also brought to mind the idea of going down with the ship or a sense of crushing inevitability,” they continued. “Then we thought, what if you flipped that? What if you opened on a sunken ship and that was the beginning? What if this sunken ship were a thriving habitat for ghosts who live there? What if something came along that jeopardized their beautiful afterlife?”
Since American Football dropped ‘LP3’ in 2019, they have released the standalone single ‘Rare Symmetry’ in 2021, and also made a 25th anniversary reissue of their seminal debut album with covers by Ethel Cain, Blondshell and more.
They will be hitting the road again in 2026, with shows kicking off in the US in May, before heading over to the UK and Europe later in the summer. You can find UK tickets here, and here for international dates.
In 2024, NME spoke to American Football about their debut album ‘(LP1)’ turning 25, and what it feels like to see their music have such a strong impact on fans around the world.
“I can’t explain it. I don’t know how they even heard it,” Kinsella shared. “I don’t know how it translates with how, in my mind at the time, I was just writing what I knew, which was this tiny little world. Whatever thing was happening to me specifically, it was very just me, me, me. So the fact that people in different countries and at a different time still appreciate it, it’s amazing.”
He continued: “I also don’t think I’m cool for doing it, I think I just lucked into it. When I was 18 or 20, all of my friends were in bands and most of them were cooler than my band. We were aware of that at the time. So it’s just dumb luck that this band caught on.”
