Brainwasher (feat. members of The Flaming Lips) Announce Debut LP, Share ‘At Least It Beats an Actor’
Brainwasher is a project out of Oklahoma City led by longtime collaborators Matthew Duckworth Kirksey and Tommy McKenzie.
You might recognize their names from projects like The Flaming Lips, Miley Cyrus, Brothers Griiin, Beachy Head, or Net. Together they’ve built something entirely their own under the name Brainwasher, which is a warped blend of trip-hop with touches of industrial haze, woozy new wave textures, and moments of shoegaze. Their debut album, ’39 Lightyears from Heaven,’ is set to land October 24, 2025 on Mothland.
The album is a ten-track ride that leans into both the strange and the soulful. Think experimental rock pushed through a foggy lens of broken synths and raw emotion. It’s cinematic and pulling energy from the dreamlike weirdness of David Lynch, the snarling elegance of Nick Cave, and the haunting depth of Portishead.
To kick things off, Brainwasher is dropping the lead single ‘At Least It Beats an Actor’. It’s a dark little groove built on a pulsing bassline, glitchy drum machine rhythms, and a synth hook that buzzes like it’s been hotwired. There’s even a hint of spaghetti western guitar in there. Lyrically, the track takes aim at art, ego, and the odd tightrope between creativity and collaboration. Imagine something between MGMT, Sonic Youth, and Massive Attack…just very spaced-out.
Even though this record has been quietly in the works for over a decade, ’39 Lightyears from Heaven’ sounds like it was made for right now. The music video for ‘At Least It Beats an Actor,’ directed by longtime Flaming Lips collaborators Wayne Coyne and Blake Studdard, takes the chaos even further. The duo describes it as: “It’s freakier than a Diddy party, it’s louder and wetter than a thunderstorm, more suspenseful than the Golden Gate Bridge, scarier than an El Salvadorian prison, more influential than religion. Who needs Habeas Corpus when you have this video? Did we understand the assignment or fail so spectacularly the assignment changed?”
Headline photo: Blake Studdard
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