rrunnerrss plant a lighthouse at the edge with their self-titled debut, out February 6, 2026 via Howells Transmitter Records.
A campfire flickers on the prairie while the city votes to forget—rrunnerrss, the eponymous debut by the Austin-born band rrunnerrss led by award-winning songwriter and composer Michael Zapruder, arrives as both shelter and flare. Set for release on February 6th, 2026 via Howells Transmitter Records, the album works like a portable sanctuary built from Indie Folk and Soft Pop, but braced with desert-rock pentatonics, psychedelia, and unruly guitar improvisations. Indeed, what first feels hushed and intimate soon reveals a music of refusal: songs about safety, belonging, and freedom made under the psychological weather of Texas’s hurtful, narrowing politics. The result is a record of exile that doesn’t mope; it practices liberation as a daily craft.
The band itself is a quiet supergroup—veteran Austin players Mike St. Clair, Andy Beaudoin, Carolyn Trowbridge, Lauren Gurgiolo, and Wiley Green—and you can hear the miles in their restraint. Moreover, the production favors air over ornament: dry drums that breathe, guitars that shimmer without preening, synths that hover like distant weather systems. Zapruder’s writing leans on vivid, tactile images—a mosquito in a cup of tea, a leaning tree, a wren that keeps calling—so the arrangements leave space for those images to settle. In fact, the grooves are frequently hypnotic, built on mantra-like refrains, hand percussion, and a conga-tinted pocket that nudges the songs forward with patient insistence. The vocals, warm and unforced, carry the text with humane clarity; however, there are moments when the melodic line sits too flat, lending a faint dullness to passages that otherwise glow.
A very brief walk through the eight tracks clarifies the arc. “Carolina Wren” opens with melancholic guitar and faraway synth, laid-back drums heavy on conga; its collage of small memories—green car, brown seats, the wren calling—establishes the album’s method: specific detail as emotional dirigible. “Home” pivots to a lightly reggae-stroked rhythm and ethereal keys; the hemlock and the yellow-rimmed eye turn into symbols for belonging seized and redistributed, the song’s lilt belying its indictment. “Of Course You’re Crying” toggles between sad drift and playful locomotion, a rhythmic see-saw that mirrors the lyric’s bracing admission: grief in a place “everybody hates” may be the only honest weather report. Moreover, “Keep It Safe” advances a communal ethic on buoyant guitars and lounging drums; the refrain—“safe keep it safe”—feels like both lullaby and rallying cry, as if protection were a work verb.
In addition, “In Return (A Certain Thing)” relaxes into velvety mid-tempo motion, its soulful guitar and deeper vocal register naming a mysterious reciprocity: tell the truth and something true finds you back. “Leaning Tree” is the record’s agnostic prayer, playful and tender, asking destiny and refuge to speak plainly while the rhythm section drapes the question in soft-focus light; the mantra “take yourself out of the picture” is a counter-ego ritual fitted to our era. “Ruins” pares the lyric to a stony chant—“The walls the walls”—over island-tinted drums, funky guitar flicker, and a quietly muscular bassline. Here the minimal text is the point; yet the repetition occasionally tests patience, even as the groove persuades the body to consent. Finally, “Get Me Out Of Here” closes with the album’s most tender hush: acoustic filigree, chill percussion, a feathery vocal, and subtle winds. It’s the sound of a soul refusing panic, naming the doom without doom-scrolling it, asking for exit as a way to reenter life.
If the album has limits, they stem from its discipline. At times, the vocal melodies resolve too quickly, undercutting the exploratory guitars and percussive restlessness. However, the band’s textural intelligence nearly always compensates: cymbals whisper instead of shout; guitars sketch constellations rather than fill the sky with neon; synths are felt as temperature more than as motif. Zapruder’s language, meanwhile, holds warmth without sentimentality, a poet’s eye trained on ordinary objects until they admit their politics. The production’s lack of gloss feels intentional: these are live-wired rooms you can inhabit, not glass cases to admire.
What rrunnerrss ultimately offers is not comfort but equipment—grooves to carry, phrases to remember, a way of standing upright in unfriendly weather. Moreover, by yoking surreal imagery to tactile rhythm, the record insists that imagination is a civic muscle. You can dance to these songs, but you can also use them. In fact, you may find that the more you listen, the more the album behaves like a lantern: modest wattage, uncanny reach. Exile becomes practice, and practice becomes freedom—quiet, repeatable, and stubbornly alive.
Make sure to follow the band on Instagram for more updates about the release.
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A campfire flickers on the prairie while the city votes to forget—rrunnerrss, the eponymous debut by the Austin-born band rrunnerrss led by award-winning songwriter and composer Michael Zapruder, arrives as both shelter and flare…