Album art by Xueni Hu

Style: Math rock, midwest emo, progressive rock (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: TTNG, Delta Sleep, toe, CHON, American Football
Country: United States
Release date: 14 November 2025

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For me, math rock has always been a genre that’s incredibly easy to like, but tough to truly love. You can put on a mega-playlist of the intricate guitar tapping, extended harmonies, and shifting time signatures spun forth by bands from CHON to Covet to Totorro and I’ll happily vibe along for hours on end, but precious little of what I heard would merit a response more ecstatic than “Yeah, this is pretty good.” To truly stick in my mind as something special, it’s got to go beyond the genre’s basics – not just gently sparkle like one of the night sky’s many stars but explode into the forefront of my attention like a supernova. And, to be fair, plenty of bands have pulled this off. For example, toe masterfully incorporated post-rock dynamics and atmosphere into an otherwise frenetic genre, while TTNG took the heart-seizing, nostalgic angst of math rock’s Midwest emo roots and brought it into the more refined, complex sound of the style’s present. But with those bands’ peak eras well behind them, and few proper math masterpieces (mathterpieces?) connecting with me over the past half-decade, the time is right for a promising squad of Gen Z kids named Stereosity to explode out of southern California and carry the torch of twinkle into a new era. Has their debut fully breathed New Life into a stale style, or is their sound one that still needs a bit of time to Grow?  

One thing’s for sure – these guys sure as hell can tap their guitars. One of the genres Stereosity lists themselves as on their website is “twinkle rock”, and while it might not exactly have its own tag on RYM, it’s a hell of an apt descriptor. Sam Krones and Jack Carone tap out riff after giddy, effervescent riff, all delivered with a tone clean and shiny enough to eat your dinner off of. Their sparkly, tight leads and harmonically lush rhythm playing intertwine and converse with one another, melodies cascading off other melodies in a sort of tuneful, odd-meter yin and yang. Said odd meters are expertly driven by the sibling rhythm section of Luke and Hunter Leibee, whose bouncy, syncopated grooves serve each song’s twists and turns expertly while also delivering plenty of intricacy beneath the surface. Luke’s bass in particular is busy as hell when you actually pay attention to it, often filling up the low end with wild, scale-ascending flurries of notes that somehow still feel subtle. The production is also crisper than a fresh fall apple, with every one of the album’s many notes ringing out clean and clear, to the point where the very action of listening to the album feels somehow refreshing.

Okay, so they’ve got the technical chops; so do hundreds of their contemporaries. What really sets Stereosity apart is how they use said chops to craft a genuine work of emotional resonance, weaving those tight, sparkly riffs into a warm quilt of sound that wraps itself around the listener’s heart just a bit too tightly. Take the introductory title track, for instance – with its toe-esque combination of gentle, arpeggiated atmospherics and breathless tom fills, combined with wordless, sing-along gang vocals and a trumpet taken straight from American Football‘s heyday, it perfectly sets up an atmosphere of fading summer twilight, of nostalgic, ephemeral moments on the edge of being consigned to distant memory. The rest of the album balances precariously on the edge between soft, twinkly sweetness and painful, bleeding-heart angst as it grapples with lyrical themes of loss and rebirth. For instance, “Cocaine Bear” swings from a sunny, instrumental CHON-style tapfest (complete with joyous shouts of “WOO!” at a couple points) to a somber, downtempo passage that centers Krones’ soft, uncertain vocals singing about inner turmoil and self-doubt. There’s also the back-to-back contrast of the heart-wrenchingly cathartic “Ocean” and its massive, ever-building final climax into the gentle, atmospheric guitars and warm trumpets of “(Home)” that feel like the auditory equivalent of a reassuring hug. Perhaps the most mind-bending contrast comes in the climactic “Sonata in C#”, whose sharp, almost djenty chords are abruptly turned upside down mid-song into a soft yet fiendishly complex extravaganza of tapping in a shift that should not work nearly as well as it does.

Honestly, though, for an album as instrumentally and compositionally immaculate as New Life Will Grow, the vocals don’t quite live up to the same sterling standard. Simply put, Krones is not nearly as technically accomplished a singer as she is a guitarist, sounding inexperienced and amateurish in spots. Now, this isn’t as big a demerit as it sounds – part and parcel of the Midwest emo style is favoring emotional authenticity over vocal refinement, after all, and Krones has a charming natural tone with which to work, sounding in places like Hayley Williams with a bit of a head cold. But I can’t help but listen to tracks like “Human” and wonder how much more convincingly their angst would have come across from a more assured frontwoman. Carone’s fry-screamed harshes, too, are a bit raw and one-dimensional, though they’re used sparingly enough that this isn’t as much of an issue. I also would have appreciated a bit more time for some of the more ambitious songs to stretch out a bit – at barely over half an hour, the album can feel a tad rushed to get through things and would have benefitted from letting its often gorgeous sonic atmospheres stick around a bit longer.

Make no mistake, though – Stereosity have already made the most powerful, affecting math rock album I’ve heard all year, and with a bit more refinement and ambition, their next entry could very easily turn out to be a bonafide modern classic of the genre. In a year where I felt a bit numb at points, New Life Will Grow made me feel genuinely alive. It’s an album that manages to capture that volatile blend of pain, nostalgia, uncertainty, and exhilaratingly rapid change specific to a certain brief period of youth, one where seemingly-eternal connections forged in childhood are fraying and falling away. The new people, places, and circumstances that replace them are exciting, to be sure, but there’s a growing awareness that they, too, are destined to fade and die someday, to be replaced anew. So I’d advise you to keep an eye on this fresh new sprout – it’s already on its way to making one hell of a blossom.

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Recommended tracks: New Life Will Grow, Ocean, (Home), Sonata in C#
You may also like: Invalids, Feed Me Jack, Poly-Math, Wombat Supernova
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Choke Artist

Stereosity is:
– Sam Krones (lead vocals, guitars)
– Jack Carone (guitars, harsh and backing vocals)
– Luke Leibee (bass)
– Hunter Leibee (drums)