Hey, King! has released their anthemic new single “Road Rage” today. With a sound reminiscent of The Black Keys, the biting electric guitar and drum-driven “Road Rage” fiercely expresses the frustration women feel with harassment and having their sense of safety threatened but also celebrates their strength.
For the song’s video, Hey, King!’s Natalie London (songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist) and partner Taylor Plecity (vocalist, percussionist), invited twenty-one women – including TikTok star Lauren Burch, The Original Bad Girl of Comedy Luenell, Brooke Marham (In The Dark), Cheryl Texiera (Girl Meets World), Rachel True (The Craft), and the iconic Debra Wilson (Mad TV), to film themselves lip syncing to the song, resulting in a powerful video that portrays the universal yet unique strength and fierceness of women of all ages, backgrounds and superficial differences.
Watch the video HERE.
“We wanted this to be every woman’s song because we all have stories of harassment and stories of our resilience,” explains London. “We had originally planned to include ourselves playing/singing the track, but after seeing the incredible performances from our collaborators, we decided to let them tell the story.” Plecity adds, “’Road Rage’ is an anthem for female empowerment and having this group of amazing women respond to it visually is extremely humbling.”
Hey, King!’s self-titled debut album will be coming out on April 2 and was produced by 3x Grammy winner Ben Harper. “What I initially heard in them was a level of songwriting that I find to be a rare,” Harper said. “This music is singular in its brilliance with nothing to compare it with or to.”
Many of the album’s songs were directly informed by the 2018 North American tour where Hey, King! opened for Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals. The record is a dazzling 11-track collection that matches the emotional intensity of the band’s live show, a concert experience that Vancouver Weekly called “quite possibly the music world’s best kept secret.”
The arrangements on Hey, King! are muscular, driving, and anthemic, recalling the most fist-raising Arcade Fire offerings and the most ornate songs by Sufjan Stevens. Even though we currently live in a time of great uncertainty, these songs offer excitement and beauty in the journey. London explains: “With all the insecurities and worries, you just say ‘I don’t know where I’ll be or where I’m going but I do know it’s going to be beautiful.’ ” This is the ethos of Hey, King! and hearing these songs will give you that same optimism, even when things are dark.
HEY, KING!
Pre-Order ‘Hey, King!’
1. Beautiful
2. Road Rage
3. Morning
4. Half Alive
5. Walk
6. Don’t Let Me Get Away
7. Get Up
