Couch Dog and Kiwi Kannibal join forces for new single, “Just Friends”
College is filled with constantly meeting new people and making fresh connections, whether those be platonic, romantic or even an ambiguous mix of both. With school’s fast-paced environment, it can be hard to sit down and fully process emotions about these connections, and feelings can blur. Is this new friend really just a friend or something more?
Couch Dog and Kiwi Kannibal have the song for that very feeling. On Oct. 6, the two local bands will be releasing the single “Just Friends” across all main streaming platforms.
“We’ve all been there, where the lines are crossed,” lead singer of Kiwi Kannibal Amanda Wernik said. “The song has a boy and girl singing to each other. It is kind of a coming of age story, written at the time of our lives.”
With coming-of-age stories in television shows and movies like “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” “Outer Banks” and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” a part of pop culture encourages younger viewers to get lost in idyllic love stories, to feel like the main character in a teenage romance film themselves.
Wernik wrote “Just Friends” to emote those feelings of being in a euphoric, dream-like trance.
“I wrote it as kind of a fun, catchy song,” Wernik said. “Something has happened between two people that makes it messy.”
She brought the song to Couch Dog with hopes of collaborating. Having the same producer, they were able to play with different melodies, beats and sounds in the studio together. In just two hours, they had nailed down exactly how they wanted the song to sound.
“We were yelling and screaming, like, ‘Oh, that’s it!’” lead guitarist of Couch Dog Pablo Acosta said. “I could have done a backflip.”
The new release spans multiple genres but contains musical elements that resemble those of the early 2000s.
“The song is semi-like Hannah Montana but grungy. It gives off Y2K energy,” Acosta said. “When [Wernik] presented this song, everything was super good. It was kind of like listening to ‘80s songs,” Acosta said.
To promote the song, the two bands are giving away a poster of the album art. Information about the giveaway and the new release can be found on Couch Dog’s and Kiwi Kannibal’s Instagram accounts.
