Youth Lagoon – the alias of Idaho-based producer and songwriter Trevor Powers – announces his new album, Rarely Do I Dream, out February 21st via Fat Possum, and presents the video for lead single “Speed Freak.” Additionally, Powers announces a 2025 North American tour. Rarely Do I Dream is Youth Lagoon’s most comprehensive and audacious album to date. It’s a treasure trove of home movies, twangy fuzz guitars, sun-bleached synths, classical pianos, blown-out drums, and Powers’ spellbinding melodies, all which feel like an old photograph that’s been reanimated in a strange and distant future.In the fall of 2023, Powers discovered a shoebox filled with home videos in his parents’ basement. “When I took the tapes home and popped in the first one, it was my brother Bobby and I at the state fair. I was 4 years old choking on a corn dog,” he laughs. “If anything’s a summary of life, that is.” Powers spent the following week recording his favorite moments off the TV — Easter egg hunts, backyard baseball, bloody noses, birthday parties, road trips, and all the life in-between. The vivid intimacies of life and boyhood depicted in Powers’ home movies began shaping and infusing with his songs. He started sampling the audio and manipulating it into a kind of musical cinematography, fusing past with future. “What I was really consumed with was how much I could zoom in on my actual history,” says Powers. “I wanted to really make someone feel like they were inside my living room in 1993, but rearrange the furniture a bit. Something about combining that level of hyperreality with fairytales of devils and detectives weirdly felt like the truest way to immortalize these pieces of my family.”
Rooted in love and childhood memoir, Rarely Do I Dream is a triumph of American gothic imagination — where storybook innocence dissolves into a radioactive billow of teenage drifters, drug-addled hustlers, and old-world folklore. Drifting between propulsive electronica and hallucinatory rock songs, Powers’ singular voice always glows front and center as the neon road sign pointing home.“The more I rewind the tapes of my life, the more I can hear the voice of my soul,” Powers says. “This isn’t nostalgia. Life’s much more messy than that. It’s a dedication to all the parts of who I was, who I am, and who I’m going to be.”With a bent toward rural noir, Powers has found a home in a world where his personal journals and poetic confessions are indistinguishable from the twisted mythologies of habitual sinners and devout barflies. Lead single “Speed Freak,” a dark joyride that showcases Youth Lagoon’s glaring metamorphosis, unleashes a grungy beat while synth bass struts and splinters into a technicolor post-punk spectacle. “This song came from a thought I had of giving the angel of death a hug,” Powers says. “We spend our whole lives running from this thing we can’t outrun. This body is temporary, but there is no death. Only transformation. A door opens when you learn to let go of the identity you’ve been building your whole life. Someone told me a couple years ago, ‘I have good news for you and I have bad news. The bad news is Trevor is doomed. There’s no hope for Trevor. The good news is — you’re not Trevor.’ When I heard that, it clicked.”
The video is directed by longtime creative collaborator Tyler T. Williams.
Watch the Video For “Speed Freak”
After taking an eight-year hiatus, Youth Lagoon returned with the acclaimed Heaven Is a Junkyard in early 2023, “a warped but ornate, experimental form of Americana” (The Ringer). “I had ended Youth Lagoon years ago because I lost who I was,” Powers says. “Then life jumped me in an alley and gave me a beating. That suffering changed my frequency. Now my ideas are a river. I can’t keep up.”
Powers’ ability to relentlessly push and evolve the project forward has taken Youth Lagoon into a territory both fiercely original and strikingly expansive. Recorded with co-producer and mixer/engineer Rodaidh McDonald, Rarely Do I Dream marks a seismic transformation, a mammoth leap forward, and an instant, indelible landmark in Youth Lagoon’s revered discography. With a profound love and dedication to family, along with his own brand of genre-bending noir rock, Powers’ has achieved what he set out to do.
“I wanted to make an album that feels like life itself . . . ”
Youth Lagoon tour dates
Thu. Mar. 27 – Spokane, WA @ District Bar @ Knitting Factory
Fri. Mar. 28 – Missoula, MT @ ZACC
Sat. Mar. 29 – Boise, ID @ Treefort Fest
Thu. Apr. 3 Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater
Fri. Apr. 4 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret
Sat. Apr. 5 – Victoria, BC @ Upstairs
Sun. Apr. 6 – Seattle, WA @ Crocodile
Tue. Apr. 8 – San Francisco, CA @ August Hall
Wed. Apr. 9 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Regent
Thu. Apr. 10 – San Diego, CA @ Casbah
Fri. Apr. 11 – Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress
Mon. Apr. 14 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger
Tue. Apr. 15 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk
Wed. Apr. 16 – Dallas, TX @ Deep Ellum Art Co
Fri. Apr. 18 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
Sat. Apr. 19 – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade (Altar)
Sun. Apr. 20 – Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506
Mon. Apr. 21 – Washington, DC @ The Atlantis
Tue. Apr. 22 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry
Thu. Apr. 24 – Brooklyn, NY @ Warsaw
Fri. Apr. 25 – Jersey City, NJ @ White Eagle Hall
Sat. Apr. 26 – New Haven, CT @ Space Ballroom
Sun. Apr. 27 – Boston, MA @ Middle East Downstairs
Tue. Apr. 29 – Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rossa
Thu. May 1 – Toronto, ON @ Axis
Fri. May 2 – Detroit, MI @ El Club
Sat. May 3 – Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
Sun. May 4 – Louisville, KY @ Whirling Tiger
Mon. May 5 – Indianapolis, IN @ Hi-Fi
Wed. May 7 – Chicago, IL @ Outset
Thu. May 8 – Milwaukee, WI @ Vivarium
Fri May 9 – Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon
Sat. May 10 – St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club
Mon. May 12 – St. Louis, MO @ Atomic Cowboy
Tue. May 13 – Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck
Thu. May 15 – Denver, CO @ Marquis
Fri. May 16 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Block Party
Keep your mind open.
[Speed over to the subscription box!]
[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]