Style: Progressive rock, progressive metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Bent Knee, Hayley Williams, The Dear Hunter
Country: United States
Release date: 12 June 2026

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Have you played a lot of video games? Do you identify as a prog snob? Are you a spunky millennial with a backpack covered in pins? If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, Ok Goodnight’s new album Stop/Go might be for you.

Let me explain. This isn’t because the Boston progressive rock outfit consciously panders to any particular crowd. Rather, their songs are complex enough to satisfy prog devotees, emotionally direct enough to resonate beyond the genre’s diehard audience, and infused with just enough nerdy enthusiasm that the band feels perfectly at home at a video game-themed metal festival.¹

Stop/Go, Ok Goodnight’s latest album, is deeply approachable in spite of the band’s heft and musical pedigree. The quartet make their home somewhere between progressive rock and metal, never seeming overly concerned with where one ends and the other begins: they purvey some genuinely heavy passages, even flirting with djent in the careening, chaotic outro of “Top of the Bottom”. But at times, their sound is more reminiscent of Berklee College of Music prog rock contemporaries Bent Knee. In particular, the bursting crescendo in the final minute of “22” sounds like it could be straight off of Land Animal. Elsewhere, Ok Goodnight’s emotional candour evokes moments from Hayley Williams’ solo work. 

Ok Goodnight’s previous album, The Fox and the Bird, was steeped in fantastical conceit, with a full-blown storyline about anthropomorphized animals teaming up to end a drought. Conversely, Stop/Go is lyrically more grounded in human nature and emotion. This more grown-up thematic terrain also leaves traces in the compositions. Electronic edges adorn the album, particularly in intros and outros, where flickering synths and glitching distortions blur the lines between tracks. Few songs arrive or depart at full throttle; instead, they emerge and dissolve in an introspective, shifting stream of consciousness. And from the slinking, sultry funk of the intro to “The Game” to the squalling, proggy rhythms of “Humpty Dumpty (‘Some Body!’)”, Ok Goodnight’s rhythm section is foregrounded across Stop/Go, with the bass and drums cavorting in intricate tandem. Occasionally, the drumming is almost too conscious of its own cleverness, but the exuberance and technical brilliance is hard to begrudge.

Though this instrumental richness prevents Ok Goodnight’s compositions from coming across as mere vehicles for the vocals, Casey Lee Williams’ versatile alto is unquestionably the centrepiece of Stop/Go. Equally capable of wispy, feather-light vulnerability and full-throated, gritty catharsis, she navigates the album’s shifting moods with impressive agility.² The commanding presence she brings to “The Game”, bolstered by a chorus of backing vocals, is particularly striking. However, not all of the vocal choices land. Around three-and-a-half minutes into “No Sound”, Williams breaks from an intimate, subdued delivery for a sudden crescendo that strikes me less like emotional release and more like a nearby mosquito making an unexpected dive toward my head. The same issue recurs periodically when she switches too abruptly from softer to more emphatic passages.

Indeed, while Ok Goodnight wield restraint and bombast with equal competence, I’m sometimes unconvinced by the balance between the two. Take the achingly tender “Call Me Away”, where Williams’ voice swells above the delicate bloom of acoustic guitar and piano as she laments feeling like a dog on a leash who doesn’t want to be set free. Yet this affecting interlude is immediately followed by the carnival-barker spoken-word introduction of “The Show”, a tonal pivot so abrupt that it feels as though the album has changed costumes between tracks. The latter’s zany theatricality recalls the unabashed whimsy of the band’s previous concept work, but these eccentric impulses seem disconnected from the emotional core of Stop/Go, and the track’s placement here undercuts the emotional resonance that precedes it.

These occasional imbalances ultimately do little to diminish Stop/Go’s considerable charms. Much like the eclectic audience likely to gather at an Ok Goodnight show, the album finds common ground between seemingly disparate sensibilities: it’s earnest yet playful, technical and progressive yet welcoming and warmly accessible. However you arrive at Stop/Go, the album welcomes you in rather than asking you to prove you belong.

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Recommended tracks: No Sound, The Game, Call Me Away
You may also like:  lovemenot, Madder Mortem
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

Ok Goodnight is:
– Casey Lee Williams (Vocals, SFX)
– Martín de Lima (Keyboards, guitars, orchestrations, backing vocals, SFX)
– Augusto Bussio (Drums, guitars, backing vocals, SFX)
– Peter de Reyna (Bass, backing vocals, SFX)
With guests:
– Eve (Guitar)
– Ella Wilhelmina (Saxophone, clarinet, flute)
– Rodolfo Moreno (Saxophone)

1.  The band played at the 2026 edition of the Mad With Power festival. ↩︎
2.  When I saw Ok Goodnight live, Williams apologized for being sick at the start of the show before going on to deliver an effortlessly varied performance. ↩︎