After much trial and error, indie rock band Hippo Campus has announced they are releasing their brand new album Flood on September 20th. The band has been around for over a decade with an eclectic catalog of music. Its members include Jake Luppen (vocals and guitar), Nathan Stocker (vocals and lead guitar), Zach Sutton (bass and keys), Whistler Allen (drums and vocals), and DeCarlo Jackson (trumpet).
The story of Flood starts in the Summer of 2023 when Luppen decided that the album they were working on simply wasn’t good enough. As a group, they worked hard to write over 100 songs, go to therapy, and become sober to hone in on their craft. When the time came, they kept only the tracks they loved and out came what has been dubbed the best Hippo Campus album yet. With 13 tracks full of love, mystery, and every emotion you can imagine, the band does what they do best by “feel[ing] everything and transmuting it all into songs that are inescapable,” per their Bandcamp.
The release of their catchy single “Paranoid” brings this story to life as Luppen and the group go through all the twists and turns of the past year of writing, asking the existential question “Is there something waiting out there for us at the finish line?” As the band exposes their woes and sorrows through the three-minute track, Luppen’s voice cracks as he chaotically expresses “Wait, I wanna give this life all that I have in me,” at the end.
You can keep up with all things Hippo Campus here and stream their new single, and those that came before it, on all streaming platforms.
