Wounded Touch Released Video For “Sleep A Cicada Would Envy”

Today, Michigan band Wounded Touch have shared their new single and video “Sleep a Cicada Would Envy” out on Smartpunk Records. The song leans into a rhythmic, pummeling approach with a melodic reprieve reminiscent of mid 2000s post-hardcore influences, like Poison The Well and Finch. The band’s ability to be both technical and deliver a heavy breakdown shines, ending the song in an impassioned whirl. It was recorded and mixed by Andy Nelson at Bricktop Recording and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege. The song is also paired with three live tracks that were recorded in Newcastle, England at the Little Buildings venue. You can listen here now.

Diving into the track, the band states: “‘Sleep a Cicada Would Envy’ is an artist’s metaphorical two week’s notice. Lyrically it’s about the desire to seek much needed sleep, which the narrator hopes lasts as long as a cicada’s own cycle, after leaving behind their own hollow, emotionless “shell” in the form of one final song.”

The horror film-esque video for the song was conceptualized and directed by vocalist Nick Holland and filmed at an abandoned summer camp in the metro Detroit area. It is just as much influenced by early 2000s video games like Fatal Frame and Eternal Darkness as it is by the films Jacob’s Ladder, Kill List, and 8MM. The video finds the band being watched through cameras by a restless detective with the real (or is it) target being the ‘Cicada Man’.

On creating the video concept, Holland expands: “We made arrangements to film at an abandoned summer camp in the metro Detroit area and the crew we were going to film with were suddenly unavailable. The only camera we found ourselves with access to that day was an old DSLR of mine, the obsolete quality looked like older CCTV footage and it gave me the idea of mounting the camera in various angles to play to that and make it look like surveillance footage on a damaged VHS tape.

Which of course led to the question, who would be watching surveillance footage of a band and why would they be jamming in this of all places? All I could think of was casting my friend Dustin Prince who is an actor I’ve worked with several times as a detective attempting to obtain some kind of information from the tape, but I didn’t want to just leave it at that and accept it as ‘music video logic.’ I  wanted to actually give him a reason for watching. Knowing it had to in some way play into themes of the song itself, we chased the idea of insomnia and embodied the desire for sleep as an elusive cryptid we called the ‘Cicada Man’ whose exoskeleton is made of the character’s discarded notes of paper. Of course the cop out ‘it was all just a dream’ ending might seem like an easy route, but so much of it felt like the hazy, half remembered details of a fever dream to begin with.”

“Sleep a Cicada Would Envy” marks Wounded Touch’s first single following the band’s album AMERICANXIETY released in March 2022. The record saw acclaim from the likes of Metal Hammer, BrooklynVegan, and Distorted Sound, and featured on staff best of lists on Kerrang and Invisible Oranges. 2023 has found the band playing shows around the midwest and beyond, including dates supporting bands like Frail Body and See You Next Tuesday, and performances at South By South West.