From the opening moments of bitknot, it’s obvious that Feeble Little Horse has found an entirely new gear. Where on Girl with Fish the blown-out textures were more ’90s indie rock and shoegaze, on their latest LP, there’s a more modern edge to the distortion and the riffs cut cleaner. Similarly, where the digital glitchiness was mostly relegated to window dressing on their sophomore record, on bitknot it’s integral to the arrangements and a core part of their emerging, distinct sound.
We got a preview of this new direction on the one-off single, and one of my favorite songs of 2025, “This Is Real.” It blended blast beats, Sonic Youth-esque guitar melodies, pitch-shifted vocals, and glitchy samples. It even briefly lets the metronome click bleed into the track. It’s a three-minute chaotic tour de force that needs to be heard.
Bitknot reins in the scatterbrained tendencies and turns the thesis of “This Is Real” into something more approachable and sustainable over the length of a 25-minute LP. The opener, “Doorway,” starts with a wail of feedback and a pummeling series of guitar stabs before settling into a melodic microloop of synths and vocals over a programmed drumbeat. It drifts back to the big drum hits and fuzzy guitars for the chorus, gradually adding elements before collapsing into an outro of beat repeats and vocal stutters. It’s more “restrained hyperpop” than “maximalist indie rock” by the end.
“Rewind” relishes in its cheesy synths. It’s college rock guitar and aloof guitars seamlessly married to bird recordings, a synth koto patch, and meowing melodies. “Shady” pairs low-quality MP3 guitars with a drum loop that sounds ripped from a 1998 issue of Computer Music Magazine. “Dior” even brings back the click track gimmick from “This Is Real” for its outro.
If “This Is Real” was trying on a splashy new outfit at the store, bitknot is learning to incorporate some of that outfit’s flamboyant elements into your daily wardrobe and make it yours.
It never reaches the absurd giddy highs of last year’s single, but it’s a better showcase for Lydia Slocum’s songwriting. The lyrics veer from sweet on “Cradle” (“I’ll draw our baby’s face / Give it your last name”), to bitterly disaffected (“That butterfly was my mistake / An analog of something fake / A metaphor I couldn’t shake”) on “Upside Down.” Slocum’s even got jokes on “Dior” (“He hit my line and said he wants to know his chances / Can’t tell a lie, I told him, ‘Slim like my Virginias’”).
The back chunk of the record fully embraces the band’s new digital aesthetic. “Upside Down” is the closest to the raw glitchiness of hyperpop, “Guts” features a chopped-up vocal as a lead melodic instrument, and “Shopping” has a siren-like loping lead guitar and is bathed in subtle low-bit noise. The closer, “DMT,” explodes out of the speakers with a shower of digital sparkles and a riff that sounds like someone playing a guitar strung with rebar.
The Feeble Little Horse on Girl with Fish with a great band, but they felt like something of a throwback. On bitknot, they’ve become something more, something special.
Feeble Little Horse’s bitknot is available now on Bandcamp and most major streaming platforms, including Qobuz, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Spotify.