Song of the Day: Wild Cub - Colour

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s featured song, selected by Midday Show host Cheryl Waters, is “Colour” by Wild Cub from the 2012 album Youth on Big Light Recordings.

Wild Cub - Colour (MP3)

In a city defined by its musical exports, Nashville's Wild Cub have made a name for themselves by, well, not sounding like they're exports from Nashville. Forming the band just over a year ago, Keegan DeWitt and Jeremy Bullock's brand of darkly-tinged new wave recalls elements of the youthful abandon of John Hughes soundtracks, the baleful allure of Greg Dulli, and the clockwork electronics of New Order's middle period. Wild Cub's debut album, last year's Youth, is far removed from anything else to come out of Nashville in recent memory, and although it has some of the '00s indie sensibilities that are running wild in Brooklyn right now, the duo's romanticism is executed without a hint of irony or sexlessness. Youth is an album with a number of accessible starting points, but "Colour"'s kinetic explosion might be the album's finest pop moment. Scratching guitars, sunset-tinge keyboards and DeWitt's energetically yearning performance make the tune an insistent anthem of desire that would handily soundtrack a modern John Bender walking away with his fist in the air. As its title implies, "Colour" is a vibrant and buzzing ode to reckless love that never collapses under its own ragged glory, and when Dewitt croons, "I need you alone... alone", it's hard not to be a little jealous of the 21st century Molly Ringwald that it was written for.

Wild Cub just came through Seattle, playing a sold out show at the Sunset Tavern earlier this month, but if John Richards has anything to say about it, they'll be back sooner than later. Actually, look for them during KEXP's broadcast from Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop in Austin during SXSW. Check out the band's website and Facebook to keep track of what they'll be up to in 2013, and watch the band play live in KEXP's studios here and below.