THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Distraction, depression, and heartbreak reign supreme in 2025. “Making art in this day and age for me is a battle for focus; we’re in an age of interruption,” says Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards’ sixth album Better Dreaming. Proudly waving an anti-fascist, liberation, freak flag, Better Dreaming contains some of Tune-Yards’ smoothest, funkiest, and most direct pop music to date, and yes, you can dance to it. And when you do dance to it, be prepared to sweat out something that’s been long stuck inside, and pretty deep down.
The songs of Better Dreaming came to Garbus and partner Nate Brenner with unusual ease. They asked themselves what would happen if they simply let the songs come out, following any trail they wished — first thought, best thought style. There was a strong desire to move, to make music that would enter the ear and immediately loosen up the joints, get the whole body wiggling. After covid-isolation, and time away from touring and live shows, the desire to be moved by music was undeniable. The insane experience of growing an actual human being influenced this as well.
The rhythms throughout the record carry a certain freshness, with deep pockets full of subtle idiosyncrasies that stem from Tune-Yards’ return to making an album primarily as a duo. All but one of these songs are built around Garbus’ drum looping and rhythm building, as they were on some of the early albums like Bird-Brains and W H O K I L L — no full-kit drummer here, and the songs love it.
Better Dreaming is ferocious in its invocation of self-love, of collective action, of dance floor liberation, ego-death deliverance, and a future we could all thrive in. When diving into the present darkness of the world, Tune-Yards ask themselves how much literal energy and joy can be conjured and pumped through the music. In its life-affirming art-pop of the apocalypse, Better Dreaming comes true.
To kick off this new era, Tune-Yards unveiled the infectious single Limelight. The song was born from dancing together as a family to George Clinton, and Garbus and Brenner’s three-year-old can be heard singing on the track. “This one almost didn’t make it onto the album because it felt trite, especially given multiple genocides across the globe and the particular impact on children (the kids are not ‘alright’),” Garbus says. “But it kept coming back as people kept responding positively to it, in particular our own kid. Who am I to talk about getting free, about us all getting free? Fannie Lou Hamer said, ‘Nobody’s free until everybody’s free’ and it feels vulnerable but important to see myself as part of that ‘everybody’.”
Based in Oakland, Tune-Yards are also known for their film score and composition work, including the Boots Riley film Sorry To Bother You and the TV series I’m A Virgo. They continue that collaboration with Riley on the upcoming feature I Love Boosters, starring Keke Palmer, LaKeith Stanfield and Demi Moore.”
