Grumpy Shares "Bird Parts" ft. Harmony (Ex-Girlpool)
GRUMPY SHARES "BIRD PARTS" FEAT. HARMONY (EX-GIRLPOOL)
PIEBALD EP OUT ON BAYONET SEPTEMBER 26TH
GRUMPY TALK NEW EP & DEMI LOVATO W/ FADER TODAY
Watch HERE / Listen HERE
"Heaven Schmitt knows when to indulge their strangest impulses. That’s no small talent, and it’ll make Grumpy a band to watch." FADER
"Heaven Schmitt’s songwriting is indeed an ideal glue for Grumpy’s music. Their sweetly melodious vocals and piercingly intimate lyrics cut through the noise, orienting everything else in their image." Stereogum
"A collage of glitchy, nonchalant ecstasy." Paste
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Last month, Grumpy, the NYC based-project led by Heaven Schmitt (they/he) announced their new EP Piebald, which will be released on September 26th via Bayonet Records.
Grumpy signed to Bayonet (Beach Fossils, Mei Semones) in the summer of 2024, and released their first EP for the label in October. Entitled Wolfed, that EP caused an immediate stir, earning praise from outlets like FADER (who called Grumpy "a band to watch in 2025") see their new interview around the single today, BrooklynVegan and FLOOD, and landing on Stereogum and Paste's Best EPs of 2024 lists, while the project made Stereogum's Best New Artists list.
Their burgeoning indie-world notoriety then took a surprising turn, when they caught the attention of country music superstar Zach Bryan, who was immediately taken by Heaven's voice and tapped them to duet on two tracks he released at the end of last year, before bringing them on board to continue collaborating on new music in 2025. Heaven's year of collaboration continued with the release of a pair of collaborative singles, "Lonesome Ride," that they made with their NYC compatriots Sidney Gish and Precious Human (that was released alongside a Stereogum feature), and "Harmony," which features Claire Rousay and Pink Must, which arrived alongside a Paste Best of What's Next feature and earned praise from the New York Times.
Arriving alongside a video Heaven made with Grumpy bassist and creative director Anya Good, "Bird Parts" feels like a photo negative of the bright and shimmering "Crush." Beginning as an off kilter dream pop song, before dropping into an almost nu-metal style bridge and outro, the song represents the dark side of the lead single's rush of elation.
Schmitt says of the track:
In the timeline of the Piebald story, Bird Parts was the second-to-last song written. After the complicated excitement of Crush, the denial of Deeptalker, the last-ditch hope of Proud of You, and the devastation of Knot, Bird Parts is my unraveling.
I was living in Chicago, realizing I was accepting crumbs and I didn’t know why. My husband and I were hanging by a thread, and the girl I loved didn’t want me, she wanted my husband. I wrote Bird Parts about that painful proximity to the thing I wanted: “my girl isn’t mine, I’m a bottom feeder / I can’t kiss her but she calls me when I really need her.” I was settling for being near her love, but not the recipient of it.
I thought maybe we could make it work. Maybe we could stay an unconventional family. But it didn’t last. I didn’t want to be the unwanted sister-wife in this collapsing matrix. I started to unravel, to question what I was even doing there.
That chaos is reflected in the song itself. It’s the only track on the EP that sings in a more vague, dream-like voice.
Grumpy will go on tour in support of their EP this Autumn.
