Jan 26, 2023

By Caleb Campbell

Photography by Justin Broadbent

Indie trio Wild Rivers returned early last year with their soaring sophomore album, Sidelines, arriving six years following their 2016 debut. Since the record’s release, the band have been keeping busy, hitting the road for most of the year and sharing acoustic versions and remixes of some of the album’s highlights. Today, the band are back with their first new track of the year, “Don’t,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Don’t” finds the band in a meditative mode, forgoing sunny indie bombast for a reflective nocturnal effort. It is the sort of song made for late-night drives and quiet confessions, with the trio’s harmonies interlocking with the steady pulse of percussion and soft thrum of guitars. Yet, the band’s dreamy late-night vibe proves just as magnetic as their anthemic side, offering up an equally captivating combination of heartfelt lyricism and soulful melodies. Meanwhile, the lyrics explore the painful territory of cutting of a relationship that simply isn’t working一“You can’t pull water out of stone/And I can’t say anything went wrong/And it kills me leaving you alone /But you know when you know and I don’t.”

Wild Rivers’ Khalid Yassein says of the track, “I’ve heard the adage my whole life: when you know you know. People describe love at first sight as an irrevocable moment when you know you want to be with someone forever. I’m not sure it always shakes out like that. In my experience, as you get to know someone, you slowly come closer to knowing. It boils down to making an active decision to choose someone, or not. If not, you try to make a really painful, adult decision to move on, and you try to trust that it’s the right decision even when it’s hard. This song is about making that call.”

Check out the song and video below. “Don’t” is out everywhere now via Nettwerk.