Premiere: Dan Howls bring alt-blues/rock brilliance with new single, Down And Out

3 March 2021 | 12:00 am | Hayden Davies
Originally Appeared In

The lively new single from the WA favourite comes after a strong end to 2020, supporting Psychedelic Porn Crumpets alongside shows of their own..

Anyone in the West Australian blues/rock worlds would've come across Dan Howls in the past few years. Since forming six years back, the Fremantle-based group have blossomed into an incredibly exciting - and acclaimed - addition to the alt-blues-rock space, both in recording (their album A Dime A Dozen was a breakthrough moment for the band in 2018, and everything they've released since has doubled down on its sheen) and on the live stage, where the group have become worthy additions to sold-out lineups all across the state.

In 2020, the latter half of that equation - the Dan Howls live show - is something that really made itself known, with a date alongside Psychedelic Porn Crumpets (and a sold-out headline Freo.Social show too) keeping the musician and his live band busy while they worked on new material to come in 2021, after a somewhat quiet year before it. 

Today, we're stoked to welcome the first taste of that new music through Down And Out, a hard-hitting alt-blues song that really shows what Dan Howls does best, all while paving the pathways for future directions to come. It's a real step-up from what we've heard already, building the intensity to create this really quite lively jam of alt-rock and blues that carries the same rough-around-the-edges charm as acts like Queens of the Stone Age and Arctic Monkeys, albeit with a more Australian-like blues twist on top of it.

It also welcomes a bit of a transformative moment for the band themselves, as they move forward with the momentum of 2020's second-half behind them and channel it into genuinely exciting new music. "This single is the first time our band has actually had the means to do the track the justice we wanted to do," the group say on Down And Out, and you can really feel that - it really seems like the Dan Howls band is finding their feet after their breakthrough 2018 album, and there's plenty more to come.

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The single is officially out tomorrow, March 3rd, but you can take a dive into it below as it premieres on Pilerats a day early. Be sure to keep your eye out for more too, with plenty of work and live shows to come throughout the year. Also, be sure to catch the group alongside Abbe May and Siobhan Cotchin at the iconic Charles Hotel this week, tickets and more information here

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