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New York duo Lowertown have announced a new album, Ugly Duckling Union<\/em><\/a>, which is set for release on May 22 via their new label home, Summer Shade<\/a>. The nervously infatuated lead single, \u2018I Like You A Lot\u2019, is out now. Check out a video for it below, and scroll down for the album cover and tracklist.<\/p>\n The new track \u201cwas written about the hope of a new crush, and the intoxicating feelings of admiring and fantasizing about someone from afar,\u201d according to the band. \u201cLoving someone without yet knowing them, and being filled with the idea of the potential time spent together. This thinking can become obsessive and compulsive, almost like a sickness taking over the body, but maybe not in a particularly bad way. It is also about the insecurity and the uncertainty about these feelings being reciprocated or un-reciprocated.\u201d<\/p>\n I interviewed Lowertown in 2021 for an Artist Spotlight<\/a>, and then again the following year for an inspirations feature around their debut LP, I Love to Lie<\/a><\/em>. I don\u2019t think they\u2019ve ever done anything nearly as conceptual as Ugly Duckling Union<\/em>, which is described by a press release as \u201cthe conceptual world of Dale the duckling protagonist and his companions as they attempt to band together to defeat LBH, a tyrannical media corporation set on separating and isolating in their pursuit of control.\u201d It also comes with a playable Minecraft world, a handbook, plush dolls, and drawn comics by Doctor Nowhere (Silas Orion).<\/p>\n The new album was fully written and recorded by Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg. \u201cOur home has been the people who make us feel understood, and the music that makes us feel understood,\u201d Osby reflected. \u201cI feel like Avsha and I have just been two misfits doing stuff together, and I feel like this music is for people like us\u2014it\u2019s for the misfit toys.\u201d<\/p>\n