girlpuppy Announces new album Sweetness out March 28 2025 on Captured Tracks

Today girlpuppy, the musical project from Atlanta, GA, USA’s Becca Harvey, announces her upcoming full-length album, titled Sweetness, due for release 28 March 2025 on Captured Tracks. Sweetness is a raw and deeply personal exploration of the emotions that follow a breakup, touching on themes of grief, transformation, and growth. Written in the wake of a four-year relationship, Harvey’s songwriting unfolds like a journal—honest, detailed, and emotionally resonant.

The announcement of Sweetness comes with the new single “I Just Do!” which captures the thrill and futility of falling for someone emotionally unavailable. Written after a week in LA with a whirlwind crush, the track pairs witty storytelling with chunky guitars, ‘90s snare kicks, and irresistible poison-sweet hooks. girlpuppy has also confirmed a series of USA Record Release Shows in Atlanta, New York City, and Los Angeles.

The release of “I Just Do!” is complemented by a striking video directed by Trent Wayne (MJ Lenderman, Sinai Vessel) who also directed the video for previous singles, “Windows” – which was released in January to acclaim from the likes of NME, ASBO, and The New York Times – and December’s “Champ” which drew praise from Clash, Dork, The Line Of Best Fit and The FADER. Both “Windows” and “Champ” appear on Sweetness.

The video for “I Just Do!” stars Becca Harvey as a vampire protagonist at a house party, where she discovers and uncovers an Ex, an incognito vampire slayer and would-be saboteur.

Becca Harvey shares the following about the song: “I wrote this song after spending 6 days in Los Angeles with a guy I had an all consuming crush on. It’s just about that feeling of knowing you’re wasting your time by developing feelings for someone who is completely emotionally unavailable, but you do it anyway because it feels good. I wrote this entire song and then recorded a voice note of me singing it acapella in my bathtub (where I get lots of inspiration for songs). I brought it to Alex [Farrar] and he built the instruments around the melody I wrote and it turned out so much fun. This is definitely gonna be my favorite song to play on tour.”

Regarding the video, Harvey adds: “I had the idea for the vampire/vampire hunter love interest plot and when I told Trent about it he knew he could make it happen. He ended up adding in the detail that the vampire hunter is my ex and his new girlfriend (his girlfriend irl!) is at this party we both are attending. We filmed the video at our friend Kay’s house (which was already decorated perfectly) and had so much fun with all of our friends. Becoming a vampire for this video fulfilled my dream of being a Cullen.”

Director Trent Wayne shares: “Becca and I created this vampire-themed video as a playful ode to forbidden love, with a healthy dose of camp. Drawing inspiration from the late David Lynch, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and the charm of Johnnie To’s early 2000s Hong Kong rom-coms. In the story, a vampire hunter hunk crashes a rainbow-hued house party, where a vampire finds herself drawn to him. Becca, playing the vampire, knows she can never truly be with the hunter, who is destined to hurt her. Yet their chemistry creates a bittersweet tension – this storyline doubles as her seeing an ex at a party.”

Listen to “I Just Do!” here, and watch the Trent Wayne directed video below.

girlpuppy USA LIVE DATES
APR 4 | Atlanta, GA, USA @ The Earl
APR 10 | Brooklyn, NY, USA @ Baby’s All Right
MAY 8 | Los Angeles, CA, USA @ Moroccan Lounge

Sweetness marks Becca Harvey’s most expansive work yet, pairing her soft, mesmerising vocals with dynamic, rock-inspired instrumentals. The album reflects a striking duality: its title, drawn from a personal nickname, embodies a gentle warmth, while the songs themselves delve into the bittersweet and complex realities of heartbreak. The imagery ties everything together, inspired by annual beach trips with her ex and her Pisces connection to water, making Sweetness a poignant reflection on love, loss, and the tides of transformation.

When beginning work on the second girlpuppy album, Sweetness, Becca Harvey realised the record-making process itself would be almost as important as the final product. On her first album of alt-pop anthems—2022’s gorgeous, folk-infused When I’m Alone—the 25-year-old Atlanta-based singer-songwriter often felt like she was working in the shadow of her collaborators, writing words to their melodies and deferring to their creative impulses. Made on the other side of a relationship where she often felt marginalised, Sweetness felt like the right project for Harvey to rethink her creative approach and work solely from her own lyrical and melodic ideas. The result of this process was a darker, more texturally varied record than its predecessor, full of heart-rending songs about pushing back against self-blame and doubt. From its heavy-duty sonics to its naturally flowing melodies to its emotionally generous lyrics, every element of Sweetness exudes confidence, capturing Harvey relishing raw creativity and trusting her inclinations. The record takes place within that moment all artists wait for: when their “voice” becomes so clear, they realise they can just open their mouth and start speaking in it.

Freed from the nagging insecurity that she couldn’t be a songwriter without playing an instrument—she cites The National’s Matt Berninger as an inspiration—Harvey began Sweetness by recording full-length acapella voice memos. To find a backdrop for the vocals, Harvey delved into her diverse, lifelong set of musical reference points, from the country and Top 40 pop she grew up on in small-town Georgia to the later favorites that expanded her idea of what songwriting could achieve: Elliott Smith, Lana Del Rey, Yo La Tengo, and more. With the help of Asheville-based producer/co-writer Alex Farrar and additional co-writers Tom Sinclair and Holden Fincher, Harvey pinpointed a sweet spot between shoegaze, dream-pop, and pop-rock anthems from the turn of the millennium. The arrangements are sometimes nostalgic and always viscerally satisfying in their trajectories, powered by chunky sheens of distorted guitar in the choruses, drums played as hard as pop-punk hits from her youth (“Since April,” “For You Too”), and poison-sweet hooks invested with both defiance and desire. Harvey’s friends from throughout the indie rock world helped fill out these arrangements: Horse Jumper of Love’s Dimitri Giannopoulos, The War on Drugs’ Dave Hartley, Beach Fossils’s Tommy Davidson, and more.

Lyrically, Harvey is witty and unsparing throughout Sweetness, taking inspiration from the break-up lyricists she reveres, from Leonard Cohen to Avril Lavigne. Her memory is acute, accounting for nooks and crannies of romantic relationships history that lesser songwriters might skip over. “I Just Do!” is told in an elegantly scrambled montage that we don’t need to know the frame narrative to understand, capturing that dopamine-filled urge to drop out of existence just to stay in bed with someone a little bit longer. An urgent, ’90s-pop snare pattern kicks in when Harvey recalls: “I love it when I make your friends laugh/I love how much they love you/And all the fun that you guys have.” These songs sparkle with details like this, mini-scenes that help create a 360-degree view of heartbreak.

Inside jokes give depth to moments of both grieving and annoyance, even when their context isn’t fully clear. In “I Was Her Too”, she references The Waterboys’ 1985 hit “The Whole of the Moon” to describe feeling alienated by random musical overtures from an ex (“Did you really see the crescent?/I don’t even know what that means”). Harvey explains: “The person that [‘I Was Her Too’] is about sent that song to me and said it reminded him of me, and I never knew why. I was like, ‘I don’t know if that was like a good or bad thing,’ because when I listen to the song, I’m like, ‘Okay, like, I guess so.’” It’s both a funny and poignant moment: Unresolved questions about a person you loved—even slight or ridiculous ones—take on a bittersweet profundity once you accept that you may never have answers to them.

For Harvey, the other major quotation on Sweetness points toward something at the heart of the record for her. The gauzy and melodically stunning “Windows” incorporates a twinkling keyboard line inspired by Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs.” When Harvey mentioned the riff to her co-writer Alex Farrar as “the most iconic part of [‘Silver Springs’]’’ he replied: “It’s funny because that’s not the most iconic part of the song, but to you it is, and you need to include it. That’s why it’s so special, this record.” Harvey speaks about this interaction with a hint of emotion in her voice. “I think about that whenever I listen to the song, because I thought it was so funny but also profound.” Finding and articulating her unique perspective, and having it be met with reverence and respect, felt like a big deal even in the smallest moments of making Sweetness. In every way, the album is about these issues: finding your story, sticking to it, and judging what is important according to your own value set. Mixing the playful with the devastating, Harvey coasts on cathartic waves of emotion and monster hooks throughout Sweetness—a momentum which is guaranteed to push her to the front of the ranks of today’s most fearless rising indie-pop singer-songwriters.

Pre-Order/Save Sweetness by girlpuppy out March 28, 2025 on Captured Tracks HERE

Tracklist
Intro
I Just Do!
Champ
In  My Eyes
Windows
Since April
Beaches
I Was Her Too
For You Two
I Think I Did

Recent Praise for girlpuppy and the singles “Champ” and “Windows”:

“Open and melodic, her work is shot through with purpose, accented by some ace lyrical insight.” – Clash

“In the peak season for being wistful and nostalgic and sad but ultimately hopeful, Becca Harvey — the Atlanta, GA-based musician behind girlpuppy — is kicking off the new year with an outside-looking-in approach that’s far subtler; more in the vein of driving by an ex’s house out of muscle memory, scanning the darkness for light-soaked material proof. ‘You are my Silver Spring / No matter what you do, you will always hear me sing,’ she lilts {on “Windows”} at the song’s biggest groundswell of crescendo, referencing the Fleetwood Mac classic while somehow making the haunting sound featherweight with a singsong hook, airborne by billowing swathes of guitar. It’s as wandering as these deep-dives into the memories we live alongside, and feels as freeing as time loosening their grip on our wrists.” – Exclaim! (Staff Picks)

“‘Champ’ is a springy indie rock song about being on the back foot and fighting to keep a friendship alive. Becca Harvey’s vocal delivery is sugary, lacing the grizzled guitars with a little sweetness as she flames out. Trying to convince someone you’re worthy is never a nice feeling, and ‘Champ’ nails that unique mixture of neediness, hurt, and missed opportunity.” —The FADER (Songs You Need In Your Life This Week)

“{On “Windows} Becca Harvey, leading girlpuppy, sings about an unresolved breakup… She explains, ‘We did everything together, me and you / So that’s why everything reminds me of you.’ The track starts out seemingly placid, with quiet guitar picking and tapping drums, but instruments keep arriving and chiming in.” – The New York Times (The Playlist)

“‘Windows’ lives in a ruminating soundscape of indie rock softness, embodying the purgatory of post-breakup pondering. A wandering baseline and feedback-twinged guitars add grit to twinkling picked electrics, meanwhile girlpuppy’s vocals float resolutely at the center of the sonic spectrum. As Harvey tumbles through the existential weight of moving on, the track represents both the things you cannot escape, and the things you cannot bear to lose.” – Ones To Watch

“{“Windows” is} a soft, wistful track about the end of a relationship…Warm with yearning and steely with certainty, the song chronicles the impossibility of separating two intertwined lives—for both parties involved.” – Paste (Best New Songs)

Becca Harvey made her girlpuppy debut in 2020 with the lo-fi guitar pop of the single, “For You”, followed by the self-described “sad girl” indie of 2021’s Swan EP. In 2022, “I Miss When I Smelled Like You”, the Atlanta-based singer and songwriter’s foray into ‘70s-indebted arena pop, saw her team up for a one-off with Doug Schadt (Maggie Rogers). Her expansive 2022 full length debut, When I’m Alone, was recorded with Alex G guitarist Sam Acchione and engineered and mixed by Slow Pulp’s Henry Stoehr. girlpuppy’s music has gained notice from the likes of Clash, The Line Of Best Fit, The FADER, Brooklyn Vegan, and Under The Radar among others, and Becca Harvey has appeared on the How Long Gone podcast and did an interview with Matt Berninger of The National for The Creative Independent, and even caught the attention of Charli XCX who replied to one of Becca’s videos on TikTok. girlpuppy has also toured extensively both headlining and supporting the likes of DIIV, Nation of Language, Sloppy Jane, Becca Mancari, Hovvdy, Whitmer Thomas, and Matt Maltese among others, and has made festival appearances including Shaky Knees, Latitude Festival, and Riot Fest.