Hot Hot Heat share first single in seven years, ‘Shock Me’

Hot Hot Heat have shared a new single, ‘Shock Me’ marking their return to music after a seven-year hiatus.

The Canadian band – comprised of frontman Steve Bays, Paul Hawley, Dante DeCaro, and Parker Bossley – released their fifth and final self-titled album back in 2016, 14 years after their debut, ‘Make Up The Breakdown’, was released.

Now, the band are back with ‘Shock Me’, a track with a nostalgic beat that would fit perfectly within the 2001 Meet Me In The Bathroom era. The song features a catchy repetitive chorus with the lyrics: “Shock Me / shock me / oh you shock me / oh, I’m shocked”.

Speaking about how the track came to fruition in a video post on the band’s official Instagram account, Bays said: “I feel like we all needed just a little bit of time to digest life and enjoy what it feels like to wake up in your own bed. We needed some time to regroup and then regroup.”

“Now that Dante is back in the band, I was like ‘Let’s just record a song with Dante’. Then we said that we were gonna put it out on December 1,” he added. “Life is busy, there was not much time to work on it but we were like ‘lets just put it out’. So I gave it a quick mix and master. Everyone was kind of choked at me because it was right up until the last second.”

He continued: “We put it out and everyone’s been really cool and nice and positive and man, it feels good. Now we are working on another song. I think we are just going to put songs out as we make them.

In other news, Hot Hot Heat celebrated the 20th anniversary of ‘Make Up The Breakdown’.

Released in 2002, the acclaimed first full-length project from the Canadian band was produced by Jack Endino (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth) at Vancouver, BC’s Mushroom Studios. NME hailed ‘Make Up…’ as “joyously bold [and] emotionally rounded” in a glowing review.

It added: “It’s a record that shakes all preconceptions from the tree, and should be talked about in hushed tones by self-congratulatory, music aficionados 20 years from now.”