Los Angeles-based post-rock/shoegaze band Young Lovers have long been one of the best-kept secrets of the city’s DIY scene. Comprised of guitarist Mikey Macapagal, drummer Eddie Ramos, bassist Josh Solomon, and vocalist Jonny Higa, the group—whose members come from Filipino, Japanese, and Mexican-American backgrounds—first connected attending and organizing backyard DIY shows in the San Fernando Valley, and quickly earned a reputation as one of the city’s most beloved indie acts.
Today, the band shares their new single, “Back Again,” an entirely instrumental track that softly drifts through dreamy, immersive passages before erupting into an intense, epic, and deeply evocative explosion of guitar and drums. Built on a foundation of genuine passion, artistry, and friendship, the band’s sound continues to evolve on their forthcoming sophomore LP, The Circle’s End, due June 26th via Anxiety Blanket Records.
“Back Again” is a musical depiction of the visceral, hard-hitting nature of tragedy, but more literally is a musical portrait of a car crash,” the band explains.
“The car crash referenced actually happened to our lead vocalist Jonny Higa, and is meant to be as close an aural approximation of the twisting of metal, complete chaos and disorientation, and sudden, absolute quiet as we can interpret through our lens. Musically, you can think of this as a real-time stylistic transition from our first album to this one.”An intimate and ethereal coming-of-age record, The Circle’s End explores themes of grief, heartbreak, intergenerational trauma, and self-discovery. The album was first introduced last month with lead single “Ross,” a cinematic, orchestral slowcore piece accompanied by a video directed, produced, and edited by Devonte Johnson (Draag, Host Family).The visual features a dance performed and choreographed by CalArts’ own Shane Higa, joined by Eileen Higa (mother to both Shane and Young Lovers’ lead vocalist Jonny Higa).
Expansive and multi-layered, The Circle’s End stands as one of the band’s most moving and quietly cathartic works to date.
“Back Again” is out April 28, 2026.
The Circle’s End is out June 26, 2026 via Anxiety Blanket Records.
THE CIRCLE’S END TRACKLISTING:
1. Prelude
2. Back Again
3. Silver Lining Lost
4. Ross
5. Mourning Routine
6. Longest Drive
7. A Year Or Two
8. The Circle’s End
9. Continue?
YOUNG LOVERS BIO:
“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” – James Baldwin
For Los Angeles-based post-rock/shoegaze band Young Lovers, love has always been a hard thing to write about. As Baldwin notes, love is inherently tied to growth – it is growth. And this growth can only ever be found within the inevitable, mysterious, and painful process of maturation, a process that can only ever be completed if one is ready to go through it. For Young Lovers, this process, with all its uncertainties, dead ends, and unbreakable cycles became the band’s own portrait in 2026, crystallized in their upcoming LP, The Circle’s End.
The band’s journey up until this point can be seen as a prelude to these themes, and an establishing of their unique sonic vocabulary. 2018 single “Distance // Absence” as well as their 2020 self-titled LP saw the complete expression of their initial ideas surrounding love, informed by all the youthful romanticism of a newfound band. These records laid the foundation for the group’s signature harmonically rich, dynamically expansive, emotionally supercharged post-rock and shoegaze derived vocabulary. It was this joyous and vulnerable sound as well as their willingness to connect with audiences that established them as one of the Los Angeles independent underground’s most stalwart and beloved bands.
And yet, astute listeners can detect a persistent melancholy found even within the early triumph of those records, an inherent realism that forms the band’s signature dynamism. What are the limitations of youthful romanticism? What lies beyond it? And what if that love isn’t enough to make a life, after all?
In trying to answer these questions, the band found something more valuable: a complete redefinition of their conception of love itself. And in nearly every way, 2026’s The Circle’s End is a proof of Young Lovers’ own transformation.
With the guidance of producer David Jerkovich, the band’s dense, energetic guitar-based soundscapes of their early efforts transformed into orchestral and vocal harmony on The Circle’s End, throwing Young Lovers’ signature raw emotionality into clearer, sharper relief. “Ross”, the album’s lead single exemplifies this evolution most clearly. Written following a brush with death on a freeway, doubt and the looming specter of the unknown take the place of boundless romanticism; sparse drums and strings take the place of the band’s signature wall of sound; lyrics trade the grandeur of initial romance for the grief and doubt that arises from tragedy and heartbreak. “Mourning Routine” features a reimagining of Young Lovers’ own signature cathedral-esque guitar soundscape through the lens of classic pop and R&B songwriting, further examining the cyclical nature of coping with grief, heartbreak, and self-sabotage. And on “Longest Drive”, the band brings their new philosophies together in an unsparing portrait of the limitations of romantic love, and the waves of conflicting emotion that underscore and envelope us.
The Circle’s End features a more mature Young Lovers in 2026, but one that now has imbued their raw emotionality with a profound, time-tested depth. Perhaps most remarkable is that The Circle’s End as an album is at once an examination of the idea of growth as well as the group’s actual proof of their own transformation. It is a real, unsparing expression of that process and the emotions that propel it along. It is the evolution of a group that knows that to redefine is to bring one endlessly closer to themselves, and knows that to truly love, is to grow.
