Charm School Reveal Cover Of The Damned's 'New Rose'

(Force Field) Charm School is the latest project from Louisville, KY born and LA-based multi-hyphenate artist Andrew Sellers and his longtime collaborators Matt Filip, Drew English & Brian Vega. Today, the band shares a cover of The Damned's classic single "New Rose" as a teaser for their forthcoming EP, Skadenfreude Ploy.

Sellers grew up immersed in Louisville's underground music scene, soaking up local legends like Slint, Crain, & Rodan, as well as the catalogs of Chicago's famed indie labels Touch & Go and Drag City. Connecting the dots led to many an influential record plus a myriad of larger than life characters like Steve Albini (Big Black, Shellac), Will Oldham (Palace Brothers/Bonnie "Prince" Billy, etc.), David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol), John McEntire (Tortoise, The For Carnation etc.) & a host of other idiosyncratic iconoclasts, all of whom left their particular aesthetic mark on Sellers' then 20-something mind. Add in a little Post-Punk pepper from PiL, Swell Maps & The Fall, a dash of Post-Hardcore salt from Fugazi & Nation of Ulysses, and Charm School's influence recipe is fairly complete.

Their first EP Finite Jest, released in July of 2023, introduced listeners to a philosophically minded, crushingly loud critique of modern life's increasingly maddening realities. Their debut LP Debt Forever, released in January of 2025, introduced a broader range of stylistic influences and an even more acerbic viewpoint, its lyrics drenched in addictively salty, satirical humor.

Skadenfreude Ploy (yes, spelled that way), out February 20th, picks up where Debt Forever left off - with further musings on humanity's collective tortured psyche and the many confounding implications of living in today's technocratic hellscape. The concept of AI looms large, as well as modern life's various manipulation traps which seem to be more and more ubiquitous and less and less escapable.

The EP was tracked and mixed by Mike Bridavsky at Russian Recording (Deerhoof, Built To Spill), with additional production and mixing by Solomon Krause-Imlach in Los Angeles. It was mastered by Greg Obis at Chicago Mastering Service (co-owned by Bob Weston of Shellac, a man who's musical past is weaved together tightly with Louisville's).

If there is any message in the record it is that reality is becoming increasingly blurred with something we don't even have the words for yet.

Charm School Stream New Song 'Without A Doubt'

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