Crow's Feet – Towns (Track Premiere)

Crow's Feet, who're based in both Edinburgh and Glasgow, specialise in ambient, atmospheric pop. Their early work, produced when the band initially operated as a duo, leans more on the ambient end of the scale, but since expanding their line-up for 2016's Hornet's Nest album their sound has grown and grown.

With a six-piece line-up now fully in place, the band's latest single Towns merges electronic elements with distorted guitars and a driving beat. We're happy to be sharing a first listen to Towns with you; listen to the track in the Soundcloud player below.

Describing the process behind Towns, vocalist Calum Stewart says: "Towns is the result of the six of us holing-up in a house in the Highlands for a long weekend. We managed to take a load of recording equipment, instruments, amps, as well as the six of us, in three very small cars. Perhaps we have deep-seated control issues, but as with a lot of our previous songs, we wanted to record everything ourselves.

"We consciously went there with no idea of what we would come up with, so that we would both write and record the song on location. It's the first time we've ever went into a recording session without any kind of structured ideas. I was personally quite nervous about it; to have nothing to start with could end up in a waste of everyone's time and money, and to do that deliberately seemed to be verging on self-sabotage. However it ended up being one of the most liberating and relaxed recording sessions we've ever done.

"I think we have been gaining a reputation for making melancholic, downbeat songs, so we were keen to try and ignore any self-imposed songwriting rules and to make something that people could at least attempt to have a dance to. We wanted the beginning of the song to sound quite electronic, cold and sparse, but then to end up being really layered and poppy. There's a big, uplifting chorus and a very 'The War On Drugs-esque' guitar riff at the end. The house where we recorded is located in an absolutely beautiful part of the country, and the weather was consistently brilliant while we were there, so perhaps that contributed to the lack of melancholy on the song. It's either that, or the fact we watched the entire Pirates of the Caribbean canon over the course of the recording.

"In terms of lyrical content, the words came together quite quickly during the process, which is unusual for me. I suppose I personally prefer writing which is perhaps a little more opaque or inventive, rather than sledgehammering the listener with the subject matter.

"Considering we went in with nothing, we're very happy with what came out."

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Towns is released on 13 April; Crow's Feet play The Hug & Pint, Glasgow, 14 Apr