Shihatsu-machi Underground has been on absolute fire these last few months. This is relative, of course, given that 2019 will already be remembered for its rash of stunning and terrible graduations and has been short on great releases so far, but let’s not take anything away from this delicious project and the work they’ve put in and one of my favorite pieces ever written for this site being about them.

Anyway, on top of all of the little promo clips that they’ve spent literal months trickling out in an attempt to get you to notice them senpai, today was the drop of an MV that absolutely nobody in my tiny sample size has had anything to say about yet because they’ve been too busy hyperventilating:

And that right there, friends, is one of your early contenders for a whole mess of awards!

For one thing, this was already in my personal Song of the Year running even before I heard the entire thing. It’s got all of the little things, from “sounds great!” and the employ of some of my favorite production moves to “this hits on almost every secret and not-so-secret idol thing of mine from the past three years.” I previously compared it to a certain very popular pop-rock band, and I’ll stand by that, too. In full form, I wish I could get it onto the radio here and let people really decide for themselves. Like, yeah, the lyrics are in Japanese, but if you just treat the vocals as another layer in that dense-ass soundscape and can let the song take you on the journey that it wants to take you, you’ll wake up a completely new person.

I’ll try to keep the MV exposure to a minimum, though! Yeah, it’s an award contender just because disembowelment usually does, but also the acting is superb — how would you feel after murdering a person and sort of making out with their entrails? You have to get rid of the body, don’t you! This is excellent and logical. I wish I could have it framed.

As Andrew would say, not bad for something that started off as a group of friends who got bored. I’m not saying that they’re definitely the breakout of 2019 — the year is young and contenders abound — but man, they’re doing their damnedest to make sure that people know who they are.

Now go buy their album.