New Music: Heavy Feelings – Breather

Bristol/Chicago outfit Heavy Feelings had a prolific 2024, releasing two EPs, so now feels a good to look back to last December’s Breather in 2025.

Heavily informed by classic post-punk and 90s alt.rock, Breather is passionate and raw, both sonically and emotionally. Though framed around an amazingly tight rhythm section with the percussion adding a driven quality, the vocals also add so much fire and flexibility.

Putting me in mind of both Patti Smith and Courtney Love, Nadia Garofalo has a no-filter approach vocally and creatively on Breather, something that works wonderfully with the poetic bleakness of the lyrics.    

Says Garofalo about the creative process behind the band’s music, and the transatlantic working relationship of the band, “While writing I was thinking a lot about feelings of not belonging, feeling like an extra limb in your own life. That can be so hard to contend with, but it could also be transformative, if you let it.”

“I loved working with these songs, this project has really become a long-distance communication art piece. We have our different lives and time zones and yet manage to effectively collaborate and inform each other’s process from a distance.”

Breather featured on Anatomy, the December 2024 EP from Heavy Feelings, while the self-titled debut came out in March. For streaming and download details for both, check out the group on Instagram.