Foxwarren – Deadhead

Foxwarren drops “Deadhead”, the final tease from their upcoming album 2, and it’s a wild ride that somehow makes three minutes feel like a complete musical odyssey. The Canadian quintet—Andy Shauf, Avery and Darryl Kissick, Dallas Bryson, and Colin Nealis—have crafted something that jumps from MF Doom-style pitch-shifted samples to line-dance guitar licks to honeyed country-rock harmonies without missing a beat.

The track features darting flutes and mangled electronics. When Shauf sings, “I won’t stop dancing,” he’s describing what the song itself is doing: constantly moving and shifting, refusing to settle into one comfortable groove for too long.

What makes this particularly interesting is how the band created 2. After their 2018 debut tour, they ditched the traditional “let’s all get in a room together” approach. Instead, working from home studios across four Canadian provinces, each member uploaded song fragments, melodic ideas, and rhythmic bits to a shared folder. Shauf then samples these pieces in Toronto, channelling hip-hop production techniques and musique concrète to build complete tracks. Weekly online meetings kept everyone connected while they collectively shaped each song’s direction.

The result is 37 minutes of collage art that traces relationship dynamics through experimental soundscapes designed to “sound best blasting out your car window”—Shauf’s words, not ours.

This collaborative, sample-based approach represents five friends pushing against their established methods after nearly two decades of making music together. They’ve given themselves permission to ignore their expertise and see what happens when you trust your bandmates enough to let them surprise you.