🎧 Approved: Ain’t

South London’s Ain’t make music that feels submerged; not overwhelmed, but weightless. Guitars blur into texture, vocals drift in and out of focus, and atmosphere takes priority over melody.

Pulling from post-punk, shoegaze and 90s indie, their early tracks (‘Oar’, ‘Teething’, ‘Pirouette’) mapped out a sound that’s tense, slightly off-centre but always measured.

New single ‘Jude’, produced by Theo Verney (English Teacher, Lime Garden), picks up that thread. 

Built around a looping riff and a chorus that creeps in rather than explodes, it finds Hanna Baker Darch writing about the blur of overthinking, drawing on late-night conversations with guitarist George Ellerby. 

“Some of the lyrics reflect the bitter pints-deep tone of our conversations”, she says, “which has been described as the dynamic of a witch-hag and her raccoon accomplice”.

With a lyric video built from live footage to accompany the track, Ain’t reminds us that for all the detail in the studio recordings, they are still a live band at heart.

🎧 Listen to ‘Jude’ below