Photo by Micah E. Wood

Welcome to the thrill of hearing your first new favorite punk band of 2024, but just tread carefully in their company. From the Baltimore DIY underbelly arrive Powerwasher, a four-piece who clash together thinking person’s melodic post-hardcore and dance punk with a gruff, acerbic overcast in its vocals that punctuate its contemplations with a hardness. On “Crossing the Street”, the lead single off their sophomore effort, Everyone Laughs, they’re just beginning to scrape the surface of what the rest of the LP holds through their detours surrounding social discomforts that lay on heavier and heavier in each passing moment. It gets to the point where it feels like the head is about to burst. “A trick of the light / A flick of the wrist / I can’t get it right / I’m crossing the street.” Be it fight or flight, Powerwasher cause some damage either way they go.

Powerwasher’s Everyone Laughs will be released March 8th on Strange View Records.