Throughout Teen Suicide’s older albums, everything was home-recorded, whether on a laptop or on tape. In a way, that became their identity, though it turned limiting and exhausting to be categorized as a lo-fi band. Their latest, Nude descending staircase headless, begins a fresh chapter, moving away from their bedroom experiments and marking their first studio recording. Steered by go-to alt producer Mike Sapone (Taking Back Sunday, Anxious), the jump in quality synthesizes their many strengths — tongue-in-cheek humor (“Suffering (Mike’s Way)”), layers of fuzz (“Anhedonia”), and powerful screams that represent their love for all things heavy (“Keeping Her Keys”).
“We all love doom metal, stoner, sludge, black metal — especially bands that can mix super punishing riffs with really beautiful, haunting vocal harmonies,” they tell AP. “We’ve been wanting that to be a much bigger part of our sound for a while, especially at our shows.” Immediately satisfying, that can be heard all throughout Nude descending…, which they’ll debut night after night when they head out on tour with Cloud Nothings, Liquid Mike, and others next month.
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Below, Teen Suicide let us into their creative process, track by track, including a rather unorthodox studio technique: “Just close your eyes and imagine that instead of a microphone, you’re standing right in front of Jared Leto’s ear, and if you scream in his ear loud enough and hard enough, he’ll never hear again…”
“Anhedonia”
This was the first song we wrote together with our drummer Niko [Wood] after he joined the band. We had a tour booked, supporting Delta Sleep, and some festivals coming up where we’d be playing with a lot of much heavier bands, and we wanted to write something heavier and stranger to hopefully better fit with those bills. We’d been wanting to explore that side of our sound more for a while, and Niko’s playing really brought that out of us right away.
This was also a very fun song to record, and we think the chords are pretty interesting. With the guitar and bass tuned to a low C, you get some interesting voicings. The synth was a big moment for us, trying to write a lead that would cut through all the layers of fuzz like that, with the right tone and effects. It really helped Kitty change her idea of what the synth can do in a band like ours, and ever since then, we’ve been writing a lot more stuff that builds on that. I remember Mike Sapone being so blown away by the final synth tone that he whipped his phone out to record a video of how we accomplished it so we wouldn’t forget.
“Idiot”
We really love this song — there’s a reason we wanted to release it as our first single. We have Niko to thank for this one as well, since we’d never have been able to pull off a song like this without his drum skill. We wrote that nasty, opening circular-saw riff at our first practice together. It took maybe nine more months for us to come up with the rest of the song. We approached it in three parts, really: the intro and verses, that haunting middle section, and finally the breakdown, which we wrote and arranged only a few weeks before recording the album.
The middle, where Sam and Kitty are harmonizing over those layers and layers of harmonizing guitars, synths, and piano… that was a big moment in the studio. Everyone’s inspiration was moving in different directions, trying to figure out what to do first. It was great. It works as an overture, to us, these different sections that recur. Hopefully, it gives you a sense of what’s to come on the record.
The video is really awesome. Wyatt Carson really nailed it with his animation, starting with the concept of the song and building out this whole world around it with his art. The inspiration for our music comes as much, or more, from visual art, film, literature, performance art, and this song is a great example. If they ever made a movie out of Sorokin’s Blue Lard, I’d hope they’d use this song for it.
“Suffering (Mike’s Way)”
If so much of our album is looking forward, this song is one of the few that looks back instead, toward where we started. We started writing it in 2023 while listening to a lot of stuff like Wire, the Feelies, Cleaners from Venus, the Thermals — music with really raw, fast, driving rhythms. We wanted to play something like that, just because it’s so fun and feels so good. But suddenly it changes… that middle section opens everything up all at once. There’s a huge synth line that sticks in your head for weeks, and then there’s probably seven or eight different guitar leads all spiderwebbing around each other, creating all these neat momentary harmonies. It’s almost like an overload, and as soon as it’s there, it’s gone again. We fucking love that.
The parenthetical in the title is a tongue-in-cheek sort of nod to our producer, Mike Sapone. He had a very strong vision for the song and was very passionate about that. His vision happened to differ from Sam’s by one single note in the chorus. Passionate arguments were made on both sides, but in the end, we all had to admit that Mike’s version was the best. Hence, us trying to give credit where it’s due.
“Spiders”
Kitty first started writing “Spiders” right after we moved to Florida in 2022. She was extremely depressed, questioning why she’d wanted to move back home. We were both going through a very weird transitional phase. It was extremely hard to create anything, to write anything, record anything. One day, a song was finally ready to come out, so we sat down at the desk together, and she dictated what to play on guitar. This one came together so quickly. It was very cathartic.
The heavier side of the song actually came later. At first, we just had the chords and her singing. In 2023, we decided to start playing it live just to see where it would go, but it wasn’t until Niko joined us in 2024 that the song really came together. It’s funny, we played the song for so long that by 2025, when we performed it, there would be people singing along to every word, despite the fact that we hadn’t recorded it yet. Not even a demo. That’s when we knew that it would be very special.
“The Knives”
“The Knives” might be short, but for Sam at least, it’s the heart of the album. The lyrics, themes, the way it all fits together, the bass, the drums, guitars, keys, vocals, harmonies — it’s like a beautiful web. And then it’s all gone just as quickly. There’s a moment towards the end that all of us agree might be our favorite moment on the record. We won’t spoil it, for anyone waiting to hear it all still.
For Kitty, it was a chance to finally record a real Rhodes. The studio in Massachusetts (Ghost Hit) had one, and we couldn’t wait to use it for something. We actually tried a lot of different synths and sounds first — even the grand piano — the Rhodes was the only lead sound that fit right in the mix.
“Everything in my life is perfect”
“Everything in my life is perfect” is actually the oldest song on our record. While a good part of the song developed fairly recently, the first verse and lyrics date back at least a decade.. .maybe longer. At the time, we weren’t confident we could pull off a sort of “character song” like this. Being a bunch of young shitheads ourselves, we worried that it could be misconstrued, essentially. Now it feels like we can really do it right.
It’s another song we’ve been playing live for a while and really developing onstage via improvisation — the middle section, where the tempo perks up a bit, came together from touring so much the last few years.
There are so many little touches we love, it’s hard to single out what to highlight. We’ll never forget Mike, toward the end of our studio time, after the song was nearly finished, leaning back in his chair and saying something like, “It’s crazy, it starts out ‘Watermelon in Easter Hay’ and ends up ‘St. Alfonzo!’” I can’t think of a more heartwarming compliment.
“Candy / Squeeze”
This track started out with the riff. Sam kept walking around the house playing the main riff and driving Kitty insane. Then he flew out to Seattle, to finish writing drums for the record with Niko, and showed it to him, and he came up with the drums right away. It just felt so great. They recorded a demo of it that same day and sent it back to Kitty, who was in Florida writing vocals and arrangements for the album.
In the studio, we convinced Mike to try recording the guitar and drums totally live, and Niko and Sam did it in about two takes. We added in the other guitars and bass and set it aside; it was actually the very last song Kitty recorded vocals for, and because of that, the rest of the band, Sam included, didn’t get to hear what she’d written until after Mike had finished mixing the record. Once the rest of us heard it, we couldn’t believe it. When we played it for Kitty’s mom, she said, “It sounds like Nirvana, like you used a lot of the Black Keys on the keyboard.”
“Living death”
“Living death” is in a very fun guitar tuning. It’s CGCGGC. We have to bring an extra guitar on tour just to play this one song, but it’s worth it because the song is so fun to play. It helps that the guitar is a beautiful Daisy Rock with a sparkling pink finish, which Sam found at Dipinto’s in Philly, back when we lived there. Someone clearly loved the guitar, because it’s very heavily customized, with some absolutely crushing Seymour Duncan pickups swapped in.
That’s the guitar we used to record it, also. We went really deep with tones on this song, for guitar and synth both. Sonically, it’s one of our favorite moments on the record. Some of our favorite lyrics also. Essentially, it’s about this idea where Jesus has come back, but in the 1980s, and in Poland this time, and they’re crucifying him again, but absolutely no one cares at all. So, the narrator of the song, who is unnamed, goes to see Jesus on his big metal cross, which is about two stories tall. They climb up a big ladder to look at his face, and even though they don’t believe in his whole shtick really, they feel immense sadness for him, and out of pity, decide to hold out their hand to him and let him eat almonds out of their palm, like how you’d feed a horse.
“Keeping Her Keys”
This one was originally called “Crows.” I think we still write it that way on our setlists sometimes by accident. It was written around the same time as “Spiders.” As mentioned, Kitty’s mental health was pretty trash at that time. And the crows were always around. Heck, they still are. Counting the crows became compulsory for her, logging all the crows in that divinatory way. Writing the song was kind of a cathartic way of translating the obsessive thoughts to music.
We wrote the big riff first, listening to a lot of old screamo and stuff. The rest didn’t really come together until later, when we started playing with Niko. The screaming at the end was one of the very last things we recorded. Kitty was getting stressed because it was our last day, and we were running out of time in the studio, and she wasn’t getting the intensity she wanted from her voice. The engineer told her, “Just close your eyes and imagine that instead of a microphone, you’re standing right in front of Jared Leto’s ear, and if you scream in his ear loud enough and hard enough, he’ll never hear again.” It worked, and the next take ended up being the one that went on the record. Now we use that trick all the time.
“Hypnotic poison”
Kitty actually wrote this song back in 2018, for her solo project. The original demo was very different, all drum machines and cold ’80s synths. We were going through a legal battle at the time with one of her exes, who was suing anyone who spoke out about his past abuse actions, and the song was partly written in response to that, processing it. She intended to include it on her next record, but when the time came, it didn’t feel right to record, and so that was that, for about seven years.
By the time we’d booked sessions for this new album, Sam had been pushing her to revisit “poison” as a Teen Suicide song. We had this idea of doing a very stripped-back version, very atmospheric, with piano and bass, mostly. It was the only song we brought to Mike without any clear ideas for the arrangement — just concepts.
We actually recorded all of the drums first, since Niko was only with us for the first few days of recording. We tracked all the slow, atmospheric drums and layers first, and then Mike kept pushing him to play busier, louder, heavier, more chaotic “just in case.” Weeks later, we listened to the track, trying to figure out what we were missing about it. That’s when Mike had the revelation that we needed to turn it inside out — start as big as possible and work backwards. Everything else fell into place instantly after that — it was incredible.
“Kindnesses”
This was an odd song right from the start. The lyrics, chords, key modulations, even the structure — it never should have worked as well as it did. But it just felt good. We wanted to do something like Eric’s Trip or Sebadoh, where these huge layers of fuzz cover up and overwhelm a beautiful acoustic guitar and vocals. By the time we put the piano melody to the middle section, we knew it was part of the album.
“Not born to run”
For the first few minutes, it’s the most traditionally Teen Suicide-sounding song on our record. Then there’s the ending. We can’t remember which one of us first thought to bring in that double-time drum beat, but as soon as we tried it, we knew it had to have a place on our record. Everything just fit around it so well.
On the original demo, Sam had done a rough version of the same guitar ending, where layer upon layer of semi-improvised guitar adds up like that. We wanted to do something like the Durutti Column or Felt or the last few Talk Talk records, with those layers. He worked out the main melodic elements from the demo so that when we recorded the song, he could build more around them. We kept having Mike loop the section again and again, to add more to it. First, he’d say, “That’s probably enough. I’ve got what I need,” and we’d say, “No, give us one more, and as soon as you hate it, you can cut it off.” After a little while, he stopped, closed his eyes, and just kept pressing record. We don’t know how many layers are in there, probably 15 to 20, since so many of them are so subtle. After we had it done, we just let that section play again and again, listening to it.
And there’s the cricket! It’s a real cricket. It apparently got into Mike’s when he was mixing, and so we kept it on the very end. It’s neat, and it reminds us of Meadowlands by the Wrens.
“Come and see the clown”
“Come and see the clown” is the most personal song Sam has written in his many years in the band. It’s not a dark, dreary song about drug addiction, or horrible traumas, or whatever else, but it’s about life, and love, and art, and obsessive compulsion, and laughter, performance, celebrity, parents and children, generations — everything in a life, really, from birth to dreams to heaven to death. It’s got a very intentional mistake towards the end, which differentiates this version of the song from the hundreds of other times it’s been performed. Sort of like the small chip that authenticates a priceless antique vase. It is this mistake, in a way, which makes the song vibrate and hum, when recorded like this, rather than limp lifelessly into a lump on the floor. And that’s music.
