London quintet sadplanet threw their hats into the ring with a trio of singles spread out across 2024 but have waited until now to make their proper first statement via their debut EP Slowing Down, which came out last week.

Their output has affirmed their understanding of and respect for the dogma of English dreampop as well as songwriting chops beyond just making excuses for pedal mashing, but the band is set apart by vocalist Kyra Ho, whose delivery nods to her musical theatre background and lyricism strives for a density and depths that few of their peers attempt. In short, there’s a lot here to listen to and all of it is good.

Lock had an interview with the band when they released EP track “Please” as a preview track back in May, and discussed how its lyrical themes tied into the musical construction:

The music… already had this joyous feel to it, but when Kyra started putting lyrics to it it started being infiltrated by the feelings she was having around a friendship at the time. Probably because it sounded so happy and exciting and romantic, she started writing it about a close friend at the time. Eventually though, some of her concerns about the friendship and its red flags and how claustrophobic it felt started to crack through in the lyrics, which is probably why the song is quite repetitive at the start and has such intimate lyrics. It gets really big at the end and changes time signature into 9/8, as a sort of break through the overwhelming relationship into a euphoric release of just ‘we are so happy to be here’.

Q&A With sadplanet @ Lock

And Tape Wounds had a fuller profile of the band last week to coincide with the EP’s release where they discuss embracing the “shoegaze” label:

It’s a genre with a lot of exploration left in it because it’s still fairly new. Yes, it’s 30 years old, but it’s still a baby, really. A lot of guitar music is quite limiting, and we want to make sure our stuff grows and doesn’t become stale. Shoegaze is such an expansive and encouraging space for that. We’ve sort of struggled with labeling our sound—”shoegaze” has always seemed appropriate, because you could call us indie rock or just generally alternative, but we use so many effects and pedals that what else could we call it?

sadplanet just dropped their debut EP slowing down and it’s everything shoegaze should be @ Tape Wounds

They’ve yet to release a “proper” video, but did put out a lyric video/visualiser to go with their first preview of slowing down back in March.