Premiere: Introducing Suped Up with “Crosswords,” a power pop spark from their upcoming self-titled album
Premiere: Introducing Suped Up with “Crosswords,” a power pop spark from their forthcoming self-titled album
As Bo Burnham once observed, every minute of our lives is being colonized. It’s a bleak truth, one that has driven many to seek refuge in small, unassuming hobbies. Painting, scrapbooking, or filling in the blank squares of a crossword puzzle. Simple distractions that offer fleeting escape, especially when done on paper, far from the endless scroll that tech oligarchs would rather keep us tethered to.
This search for comfort in the mundane sits at the heart of “Crosswords,” the debut single from power-pop duo Suped Up. Comprised of veterans from the Richmond music scene, the band offers a bright, infectious sound that masks deeper anxieties, a sharp contrast woven throughout their upcoming self-titled record, out April 25th via Hilltop Recordings. Today, The Auricular is excited to premiere “Crosswords” with an exclusive stream below, along with a closer look at the band’s formation and approach.
Suped Up is the collaboration between Noah Bowman and Brian Dove, two musicians with distinct connections to Richmond’s music scene. Dove’s ties to the city stretch back to the early 2010s, best known for his role in the beloved indie band Antiphons, alongside stints with local staples like Young Scum, Big Baby, and Brother Wolf, not to mention his own solo catalog. Bowman arrived in Richmond toward the end of that decade while still drumming for indie duo Diet Cig, a band that emerged from New York’s DIY scene, where Bowman also played with groups like Earl Boykins, The Wiggle Room, and Just Kids.
In 2020, Dove relocated to West Virginia, trading mid-sized city living for a quieter life in the countryside. There, he runs a graphic design studio called Big Fog alongside his wife, Valerie. Meanwhile, Bowman remained in Richmond, keeping busy with various projects, most notably co-founding Julio’s Bagels with Ashley Patino of Pizza Bones. Despite the shifts in their lives, music was never far from their minds and it didn’t take long for the two to sync up and start to lay the groundwork for something new.
“Noah and I have been good buds for years,” Brian Dove said. “Sometime in 2023, he hit me up about bringing his drum kit up to West Virginia and playing some music together, just for fun. Noah came up to my place for a week in May of 2023, we set up our gear in my garage, and just kinda started writing. By the end of the week, we had five songs roughed out and were stoked about the sound, so we just kept going.” Suped Up may not have been part of the plan, but it quickly took shape as those sessions unfolded. “Working on this project with Noah was a lot faster since it was just the two of us,” Dove added. “And we didn’t set out with any expectations.”
Antiphons once dubbed their sound bummer pop, while Diet Cig leaned into the label slop pop. Blend the two, and you get the foundation of Suped Up: a power pop sound where breakneck energy meets sharp, melodic hooks. The duo leaned into the style, reveling in its brisk pace and undeniable earworms. “The goal was just to write things that were fun, fast, and catchy without thinking too hard about it,” Dove remarked. “It was refreshing to write and record fairly quickly and see what came out.”
The band’s debut single, “Crosswords,” embodies their bright, infectious sound while layering in a sharp critique of the world’s downward trajectory. The song starts innocently enough, framing the act of buying a crossword puzzle book as a harmless way to keep the mind busy (“From the never ending passage of time”), a small escape from the grind of everyday life. But the second verse propels the story two decades into the future, where the price of the puzzles has skyrocketed alongside rising temperatures. What once served as a distraction has now become a necessity (“Cause it ain’t safe to go outside / While the heat continues to rise”).
The shift mirrors the creeping sense of inevitability that so often accompanies stark topics like climate crisis–how small comforts might be the only thing left to cling to as the world grows increasingly hostile. The song’s final lines land like a quiet gut punch beneath the power pop sheen, turning resignation into something almost comforting: “I just don’t wanna think about it / Cause I can’t do a thing about it / And I don’t wanna freak out about it tonight / Alright?” It’s a feeling that resonates deeply right now, caught between knowing what’s coming and not knowing what to do about it, all wrapped up in a melody that makes the dread go down just a little bit easier.
This single is just one of many tracks on the band’s forthcoming record that tackles dispiriting topics through a lighthearted lens, offering a sense of solace in a world that often works to strip it away. “‘Crosswords’ is about feeling powerless to the climate crisis in a world where maximizing profits is more important to the corporate interests that run our society than protecting our only home,” Dove explained. “So not a cheery topic, but hopefully delivered in a relatable way that provides some comfort.” Labelling the song “Suped Up’s sparknotes,” Dove added that “Crosswords” serves as a “thesis statement for the record,” with a hook-laden guitar part, tongue-in-cheek lyrics, and even a cowbell.
Stylistically, the band drew inspiration from familiar touchstones — Teenage Fanclub, Big Star, The Marked Men, Sheer Mag, and even early of Montreal. But Richmond’s rich musical landscape also left its mark, with Dove finding sparks of inspiration from local artists in the mix. “My time playing with Young Scum and Big Baby shaped a lot of my taste in terms of guitar based pop music, too,” he remembered. “Both Chris [Smith] and Ali [Mislowsky]’s songwriting were huge influences on me.”
With the makings of a record in hand, the band turned its attention back to Richmond, reaching out to Hilltop Recordings, run by John “JR” Russell of Gnawing and Drug Country. Those conversations led to a tape release, giving the project a tangible connection to the city that shaped so much of its sound. Set for release on Friday, April 25th, the band has also announced its first live performance at Get Tight Lounge the next night, April 26th, alongside Pink Window and Junior Skeptics, another new band in the Richmond scene that features members of Gnawing, Young Sum, and Big Baby.
Check out the show flyer below along with the full tracklist for Suped Up, and be sure to bookmark Suped Up’s Bandcamp and Hilltop Recordings to stay up-to-date on more news and updates as the album release approaches.
2. Crosswords
3. Lonely Country
4. Crushed
5. Suped Up
6. No Ghost, No Problem
7. Sweet Gus
8. Having Plans
9. Ripper Dipper
10. The View
