In a musical climate where pop often hides in the underground shadows, Dark City Kings refuse to play it cool- instead, they embrace it, magnify it, and send it spinning into the night like a glittering flare. With their double single EP ‘Champions of Tomorrow’s Fun/Atmosphere’, the Black Mountain outfit channel the melodic daring of The Waterboys, the new wave chic of Blondie, and the theatrical verve of The B-52s, all while carving out their own radiant corner in the alt-pop universe.
Recorded at Asheville’s historic Citizen Vinyl studios and produced by the legendary Kevin Moloney (Sinead O’Connor’s first two albums), this release feels steeped in both history and rebellion. The title track bursts forward with a B-52s-style playfulness fused to a zydeco groove, its hook-laden chorus arriving like a technicolour confetti cannon in the middle of a grey day. ‘Atmosphere’ pivots into colder terrain- a post-punk new wave shimmer that captures the strange ache of beauty from a distance, echoing the cool allure of Joy Division and early Duran Duran.
The songs were born far from city lights, in a weathered homestead deep in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. There, the band- Colleen Rose, Merlin Armstrong, Kyrie Antoinette, Bayla Ostrich, Craig Rumney, and JP Kennedy- found sanctuary. By wood stove glow and with Irish whiskey in hand, they chased melodies into the small hours, determined to make joy itself an act of defiance.
With ‘Champions of Tomorrow’s Fun’, Dark City Kings remind us that joy is not a passive state- it’s a rebellion, a lantern we have to choose to keep lit. Their choruses soar, their grooves pulse, and in the middle of the noise and uncertainty of 2025, they’re not just making music. They’re making light.