Bartees Strange shares new single “Too Much,” The track is off the artist’s forthcoming album Horror. “Too Much” is accompanied by music video directed by Caity Arthur, filmed at a haunted house in Baltimore. Horror drops on February 14th via 4AD.

Bartees Strange says of “Too Much,” “This is the sonic thesis of the album. I feel like if you like this you’ll love everything else. This record is about things that scare me. And this song is about that feeling of being overwhelmed by life. This song is about those feelings. Too much to hold, Heaven to touch.”

Strange was raised on fear. His family told him scary stories to teach life lessons, and at an early age, he started watching scary movies to practice being strong. The world can be a terrifying place, and for a young, queer, Black person in rural America, that terror can be visceral. Horror is an album about facing those fears and growing to become someone to be feared.

Horror began at Strange’s home studio with an eye toward production. A session with Yves and Lawrence Rothman (Yves Tumor, Lady Gaga) provided a rhythmic and sonic backbone for chunks of the record. After Strange met Jack Antonoff and the pair became fast friends, Antonoff began work on Horror. The twosome finished the record together, working the songs raw, editing, arranging, and dressing them up in clothing bound to inspire fear. Throughout the record, Strange lays down one difficult truth after another, all over a sonic pastiche of music that soundtracked his childhood.

Born in Ipswich, England to a military father and opera-singer mother, Bartees Strange had a peripatetic childhood before eventually settling in Mustang, Oklahoma. Later, Bartees cut his teeth playing in hardcore bands in Washington D.C. and Brooklyn whilst working in the Barack Obama administration and the environmental justice movement.

BARTEES STRANGE
Horror
4AD
Tracklist:

1. Too Much
2. Hit It Quit It
3. Sober
4. Baltimore
5. Lie 95
6. Wants, Needs
7. Lovers
8. Doomsday Buttercup
9. 17
10. Loop Defenders
11. Norf Gun
12. Backseat Banton

Bartees Strange 2025 Tour Dates

13 February – LOS ANGELES, CA, USA, Paramount
15 February – WASHINGTON, DC, USA, 9:30 Club
19 February – NEW YORK, NY, USA, Bowery Ballroom
26 February – LONDON, UK, Oslo

Pre-order Horror by Bartees Strange HERE