Goon frontman Kenny Becker, had a record’s worth of new songs ready to record, studio time booked, and a vision for how it would all play out. But weeks into the recording, life hit him like a lightning bolt in the form of the sudden dissolution of his marriage and his subsequent psychic spiral. Blindsided by heartbreak, the music Becker had written for the record began to take on new meaning. What had come from joy was now something closer to agony. In the friction of that moment, Becker pushed his band—and his songwriting—into stranger territory. Facing down the pain and disappointment of life, the result, is their new album, Dream 3.

I had this reversed guitar progression kicking around for a little while, and I showed a demo version to Tamara (bass, vocals) on tour sometime in 2023. She insisted on putting it on the next record. Lyrically, it became a meditation on heartbreak. Feeling like some kind of maimed and dying animal in the middle of a canyon, or something. Tamara was really there for me during that heartbreak so it felt right to mention her in the song.

Kenny Becker on Dream 3:

“I began this record so excited,” “The songwriting was less scripted, letting me loosen up the reins a little and follow whatever idea seemed most interesting. It started off as a really joyful recording process. Then came the most devastating time of my life.” The result is an often darker, more introspective album, built on personal loss and the chaotic crumbling of the outside world, without losing Goon’s signature sense of strangeness and wonder. Weaving lyrics about personal and ecological collapse with references to baseball, aliens, and Tony Soprano, the record expands Goon’s sound while holding close to the core identity of the band. Dream 3 offers an exquisitely crafted sonic world, one full of heartbreak and pain, but also brimming with color and life, the hope of better days to come. “Begin Here” is the gateway into the record. The song emerges in a dreamy, reverse- guitar haze, Becker’s voice hovering over Braden Lawrence’s drums like a bird in flight, surveying the green wreckage of his world. “With ligaments split at sunrise/Bubbling dirt from my mouth,” Becker sings, “I’m open and scraped and doe-eyed.” It’s the sound of a band discovering new life after torment, the way cataclysm brings its sufferers closer. Becker drops the surreal imagery for something more direct, referencing his bandmate as he sings, “Let me cry to Tamara.” “The song started as a little reversed guitar progression that I had kicking around for a while,” says Becker. “I showed it to our bass player, Tamara, who had a strong reaction to it and insisted we flesh it out. When I sing, ‘Let me cry to Tamara’ at the end, that’s because it’s what I was doing all the time we were recording it. To me, that song has this sunny, upbeat melody, but it’s coming from a place of total despair. I like that tension.”

Goon began in 2015 as singer and multi-instrumentalist, Kenny Becker’s, solo project, releasing a compilation of his best home recordings, the 2016 EP Dusk of Punk. With a full band in tow, Goon released the band’s first full-length, 2019’s Heaven is Humming on Partisan Records. Becker recruited a new band—Andy Polito on drums, Dillon Peralta on guitar, and Tamara Simons on bass—and recorded the self-released Paint By Numbers 1. A second LP, Hour of Green Evening, soon followed, as well as another EP, Red Ladder, in 2022. To support Hour of Green Evening, Goon hit the road hard, touring and playing shows with Built to Spill, Jadu Heart, Slow Pulp, Teethe, Squirrel Flower, and many others. In the midst of all this, the band signed with Philadelphia label Born Losers and began recording their next LP with Claire Morison at Wild Horizon Sound in Los Angeles.

Goon
Dream 3
Tracklisting
Born Losers Records

1. Being Here
2. Closer to
3. Patsy’s Twin
4. For Cutting The Grass
5. In The Early Autumn
6. Apple Patch
7. Fruit Cup
8. Toluca
9. The Morning Six Rabbits Were Born
10. Sunsweeping
11. Bottle
12. Fine
13. Jaw

Goon 2025 Tour Dates

06/18/25 Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves
06/20/25 Nashville, TN – The Blue Room-Third Man Records
06/21/25 Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade (Purgatory)
06/22/25 Raleigh, NC – Kings
06/24/25 Washington, DC – Songbyrd Record Cafe
06/25/25 Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s
06/27/25 New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
06/29/25 Cambridge, MA – Middle East Upstairs

Pre-order Dream 3 HERE