IVY’s first single of the year is here.
The fast-rising Ōtepoti Dunedin band, part of the city’s best music scene in a generation, today release “Gutter”, which frontman Jesse Hanan says is “basically about frustration with the current geopolitical situation.”
“It comes from that feeling of being ‘led up the garden path’, like we’re constantly being told what to think and how to live without really questioning it,” he adds about the song, which was written from the perspective of a soldier who slowly realised he is fighting in vain, fighting for nothing.
“The song digs into how we’re expected to function inside a capitalistic system that doesn’t feel fair, especially when it seems like the worst people end up benefiting the most.”
Hanan continues: “Artistically, this song is meant to represent a sense of optimistic nihilism that I think a lot of young people feel. Because everything can feel so distressing, many reject capitalist and nationalist narratives and instead choose to value peace and human life on their own terms.
“That’s what ‘Gutter’ is trying to encompass.”
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“Gutter” is the follow-up to IVY’s 2025 album Hush, which announced a major new band in Aotearoa New Zealand music. IVY’s first record painted them as a potent mixture between Radiohead and Muse, and sounded like nothing else in local music. Hush was a fledgling band swinging big, and the end result was all the more impressive for it.
We featured IVY — Coonor Cooper (bass), James Axton (guitar), Ocean Temple Wilson (drums), and Louis Stevenson (violin) join Hanan in the lineup — in our Scene Report series on Dunedin, for which the alternative rockers recorded an atmospheric In My Room session. Watch below.
Looking ahead, IVY will join Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers on their Australian tour this October, in what will be the former’s first-ever international shows.
IVY previously supported the Aussie band on their recent New Zealand tour, and our reviewer had high praise for IVY’s opening set at the Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland show: “IVY’s vast sound is designed for rooms bigger than The Tuning Fork. Their songs combine strange chord progressions with singer Jesse Hanan’s long, brooding melodies that call to mind Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’; it’s music made for getting lost in, for forgetting about the time and the commute home.
IVY’s “Gutter” is out now.
