Late Night Drive Home Set Debut Album; First Single 'Terabyte' Available Now

After months of online mystery, late night drive home has announced their debut album as I watch my life online will be released on June 27 via Epitaph. A criticism of their adolescence always existing in the shadow of the internet, the 13-track offering codes together vignettes of mistaking online connection for something real.

With their success outgrowing the bedrooms they used to create in, late night drive home’s debut album is the first time they’ve worked in proper studios. And with this growth, we see them move from the indie-rock bucket to a more expansive, electronic realm.

The album news arrives alongside the first single “terabyte.” A glitchy yet crystalline rumination on an addiction to adult content, the band finds themselves in an unending cycle of seeking online validation and destroying their self-worth. If love is the drug, the band’s drug tolerance keeps climbing. Try as they might to justify the dependence, they know they need to quit in order to establish real-life relationships.

Their drive to find more meaning in life propelled late night drive home to become the internet’s best kept secret. Following their breakout hit “Stress Relief,” the band spent the bulk of 2024 out on the road, playing infamous festivals like Coachella, Shaky Knees, Austin City Limits and Kilby Block Party. More sure of themselves, and settled into their sound, late night drive home is primed for the summer release of their debut album. 

ABOUT LATE NIGHT DRIVE HOME:

late night drive home have never known a world without internet — without access to the endless stream of joy, sorrow, and titillation that we all tune in and tune out to on the daily. In many ways, the guys can’t extricate themselves from that reality, but they’re trying to grapple with it. The culmination of that, then, is the buoyant yet ominous as I watch my life online, the band’s debut album on Epitaph, out June 27th.

“The record is a critique and a meta representation of the current online landscape: a whole new world or giant united country that connects us between cities, forcing us to be online. Instant gratification is at our fingertips — likes, follows, and entertainment a click away,” says guitarist Juan “Ockz” Vargas. “It shows the listener how we grew up in the early days of peak internet — how we saw it all unfold. We want to give our perspective on the internet while creating art alongside it.”

late night drive home was born in El Paso, Texas, and Chaparral, New Mexico, hardworking communities where the collars were mostly blue — a quality that the band would bring to their music as self-taught craftsmen. Comprising guitarist Juan “Ockz” Vargas, singer Andre Portillo, drummer Brian Dolan, and bassist Freddy Baca, the entirely self-taught quartet released their first EP as a full band, 2021’s Am I sinking or Am I swimming?, and blew up with the single “Stress Relief,” a blast of early-Aughts indie that racked in tens of millions of streams. Their first pull compilation of songs, How Are We Feeling? dropped in 2022, and after signing with Epitaph in 2023 — and releasing 2024’s grunge-inspired EP i'll remember you for the same feeling you gave me as i slept — they found themselves playing stages their indie idols previously shredded: Coachella, Shaky Knees, Austin City Limits, and Kilby Block Party. 

Since the end of the pandemic, though, the band has been dreaming up as I watch my life online. “Sonically the record is expertly produced — it was the first work we put out that was recorded in professional studios and not our bedrooms,” Vargas says about working with producer Sonny Diperri. “Topically, the album is about the internet. As a Gen-Z band, we want to give an accurate representation of how it feels to be always online. Our generation is forced to care so much about its online identity, it’s like ‘your profile is as important as your outfit.’”

The resulting suite of tracks is a series of online vignettes that hammers home the band’s message: the photos on your phone shouldn’t be your identity; your posts aren’t your inner monologue.

Photo credit: Jaydog