Ngunnawal / Canberra outfit Spouse arrive today with new single ‘The Birds Are Dead Along The Highway’, out independently via Gutwrench Records. The group will debut the single live at Canberra’s Dissent and Melbourne’s Bar Open early next month. LISTEN HERE + WATCH HERE.

The five-piece, led by vocalist/guitarist Em Nonogaki Hunter and composed of lead guitarist Ezra Patrick, drummer Daan Steffens, bassist Emmett Gaunt, and synth Josh Garrard, straddle catharsis with intensity – dark, atmospheric, mood-first sonics into a shoegaze-emo hybrid. Their live reputation precedes them, as recipients of Music ACT’s Live Act Of The Year in 2025 and a resume that counts performances with Fiddlehead (US), Cola (US), Powerplant (UK), The Belair Lip Bombs, Shady Nasty, Twine, Peace Ritual, Doris, Straight Arrows, Clamm and more.

WATCH: ‘The Birds are Dead Along The Highway’ (Official Video)

Today’s new single ‘The Birds Are Dead Along The Highway’ is reluctantly hopeful. Initially born from an observation where passing cars while driving would raise the wings of roadkill as they steamed past. ‘The Birds Are Dead Along The Highway’ wonders if things can ever return to the way they were. It’s an introspective release that buoys kinetic instrumentation with wrenching sparsity over its 7-minute span. Tense nerves bleed into distortion and howling vocals akin to Karly Hartzman with the sombre tone of Wicca Phase Springs Eternal.

Of the song, Spouse share, “Driving home from work at the end of a long day at the end of a long week, I drive on one of Canberra’s busiest gridlock highways, sun already gone in the winter by 6pm. Near the off-ramp I would sometimes see young magpies confused by the gale from the never ending traffic, they had landed on the ramp hoping for food scraps tossed out of windows, but couldn’t get off again. Eventually I would take this drive and see the birds, now dead, in the same spot. The gust of each car would force their wings to flap post-mortem, reanimating them. This stark feeling of something being left behind, helpless yet forced to continue is the force behind the song.”

When they aren’t cheekily blogging on their website – emotively driven but still know how to have fun – Spouse’s members run local events under the Gutwrench Records banner, broadcast on the digital radio station Trust FM and session alongside a tireless roster of interstate bands. Deeply embedded in the alternative scene of their hometown, in their own words they have worked steadily to pry themselves from the transient, “government town” grip of its reputation.

Spouse recognise their city for what it is: an unconventional melting pot of influences and art made in the absence of opportunity – for necessity. That is what drives their passion, fostering a scene that champions and carves out space in a place that often works in direct opposition to that craft. The group’s next phase is indebted to this, marked by change and growth, soundtracked by the tools of a cold suburban shed and the din of an industrial factory. Watch this space.