Oct 25, 2022

By Caleb Campbell

Photography by Jessica Gurewitz

Brooklyn-based disco punk outfit TVOD (Television Overdose) debuted in 2020 with their punk-inflected Daisy EP, followed last year by their Victory Garden EP. Since their debut, lead vocalist and songwriter Tyler Wright has recruited a stellar band, pulling from stalwarts of the Brooklyn punk scene, and is back this year with a trio of new singles, the first of which, “Alien,” dropped earlier this month. Today, they’re back with another new single, “Mantis,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Mantis” is a blast of driving no-frills punk, capturing both the band’s irrepressible persistent energy and their surprisingly sticky melodies. It very much encapsulates the punk ethos of loud, fast, and simple, with blaring guitars, machine-gun percussion, and jittery melodies driving the track forward. Yet TVOD also infuses the track with enough doubled vocals and sharp harmonies to ground it in the world of nervy garage rock, adding a pop element that proves hard to resist.

Speaking on their new single, Wright says, “For a solid month, I was seeing praying mantises everywhere. It was the weirdest thing and since then, I have yet to see another one. I used them as the mascot for what felt like the end of times in NYC during the pandemic. Riding the subway home on March 14th, 2020 when I lost my job and felt like the entire world was about to explode inspired a lot of the lyrics and tones in this song.”

Check out the song and video for “Mantis” below.