So So Modern Share Second Single ‘Eat You Alive’
So So Modern Share Second Single ‘Eat You Alive’
September 3rd, 2026
Despite appearances, So So Modern‘s second single ‘Eat You Alive‘ is actually grounded in being alive, or more to the point — being in the moment. The song showcases sparsity and precision while still maintaining the raw energy and urgency synonymous with the band. It is a call to unshackle its listeners from their ‘what-ifs’ and ‘but-maybes’, and seek joy however and wherever possible — giving up and giving in to life’s entanglements.
Last month, Pōneke post-punks So So Modern announced their first new material in 13 years – the Light Years EP. Out on October 9th, the EP will have an exclusive vinyl release courtesy of a recent ongoing collaboration between Flying Nun Records and Holiday Records — each with their own exclusive colour variant, limited to 150 copies of each.
Light Years is So So Modern’s latest offering. A collection of songs written in the decade since their last release, the twenty-something-year-old post-punk band have for years defied convention for how a group should operate or sound. Today the band resembles less the four young, unknowing friends who started this journey in the mid-2000s but more an extended family, bound through intersecting lives and close-knit community.
The musical landscape has since overtaken them with speed and saturation, but SSM have stuck to the path of the slow and steady – because time beats everything. Whilst the band’s sound has garnered a reputation for complex, chaotic convergences of guitars, synthesisers and rhythm, the songs in Light Years are about clarity, restraint and simplicity – an acknowledgement and misremembering of the straightforward hardcore punk and pop that inspired them as teenagers.
Light Years represents time, distance and the entanglement of life, although it is unclear if this is in relation to a distant past or the horizon of the future. The limited 12” vinyl release by Flying Nun Records and Holiday Records is accompanied by the illuminating artwork of Lily Paris West.
To celebrate the new body of work, the band will also be taking pre-orders the first ever So So Modern wearable merch, featuring an exclusive design by all-time friend and national treasure, Toby Morris.
SSM will be performing at Great Sounds Great festival on 5th September, and will then celebrate the release of Light Years in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington on 7th November at Newtown Community Centre. More details to come at a later date.
Listen to ‘Eat You Alive’ here.
Pre-order / Pre-save the EP Light Years here.
Check out all things So So Modern below:
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So So Modern emerged from Te Whanganui-a-Tara as one of the country’s most adventurous and internationally acclaimed bands of the late 2000s. Fusing the urgency of post-punk, the precision of math rock, and the pulse of electronic music, the band built a formidable reputation from early A Low Hum shows through to relentless international touring, sharing stages with artists such as Foals, CSS, Deerhoof, and Dirty Projectors, performing more than 150 shows a year across Europe, the UK, and North America at their peak.
The band released a series of acclaimed 7-inch singles and their debut album Crude Futures through influential UK independent label Transgressive Records, helping establish them as one of New Zealand’s most successful international underground exports.
Their explosive live performances and boundary-pushing sound drew widespread critical acclaim. NME praised the band for creating music that “weld[s] together successfully the disruptive qualities of post-punk with the discipline of math-rock,” while The Guardian memorably described them as sounding “like Klaxons and Kraftwerk together.”
Now shaping their optimistic, apocalyptic, apocamystic future, SSM returns as the original line up of Daniel, Aidan, Grayson and Mark – a testimony to their long-lasting musical friendship.
Photo credit: Si Moore