Elle Belle has shared their new single “Saturday,” the latest from How Do I Feel?. “Saturday” imagines a world pre- (or post-) pandemic where a simple stroll in the sunshine can be just that, without any of the other anxieties that the band’s Christopher Pappas had (and still has) attached to it.

A lot happened to Christopher Pappas, the brainchild behind Elle Belle, when he was making How Do I Feel?, both when he was writing the songs and recording them. To start with, it was towards the beginning of the pandemic, before vaccines and before anybody really knew exactly how it was transmitted. Scary enough for most of us, but even more so when, like Pappas, you have an autoimmune disease. His has given him arthritis, for which he has to inject himself once a week with Enbrel. But Enbrel can increase the risk of lymphoma and leukemia, and Pappas had a cancer scare while writing these songs after finding a lump on his collarbone. Then, four days into recording, his mother had a heart attack, though she’s thankfully now recovered. If all that wasn’t enough, one of Pappas’ close friends—who graces the cover of Elle Belle’s 2018 album, No Signal—took his own life. Needless to say, it was all almost too much. During that time, Pappas found himself repeatedly asking himself the question that would become the title of this album. It was less about finding a resolute answer, however, than it was just opening his mind and heart to everything he was experiencing, to know if he could cope with how he felt. After all, feelings fluctuate constantly.

“In a way,” he says, “I was less concerned about the answer, and more concerned about the importance of asking myself the question, trying to grab ahold of this wild ride that I was on and exert some sort of control. Like, I haven’t lost a parent and I brushed up against it—I got a little taste of it and it didn’t feel the way I thought it was going to feel.”

“By making this record,” he says, “what I did was I readjusted the real questions I should be asking myself. It doesn’t matter how I feel. What you need to remember is that people go through shit, but you can do this. That became the main takeaway. How do I feel? Fuck if I know. But you know what? I’m going to wake up tomorrow. And there’s power in just being like, no matter what you get up, you make the bed, go get your coffee and you keep going.”

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