Telescreens have returned with new single “Otherside of Town,” the track is now out on +1 Records, and off their forthcoming album Why The Lights Flicker, available June 12. Telescreens’ frontman Jackson Hamm says, “There’s so much short-form video ‘content’ of people copying a copied thing that was recycled and repackaged to be even grabbier and attention-holding than the original thing. All to keep you close to your supercomputer, you carry around in your pocket. The apps we use for our news and entertainment reward videos that keep us engaged in the slot machine. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the tech companies stealing my life away one swipe at a time. I make things that make me happy in the hopes they make you happy.. that’s it.” The video, directed by Monty Hamm, weaves in footage of the band as kids and serves as an homage to their hometown.

Telescreens is named after the omnipresent surveillance devices in Nineteen Eighty-Four – deliver their most cohesive and expansive work yet with Why The Lights Flicker. The band includes Jackson Hamm, Austin Brenner, Josiah Valerius, and Oliver Graf.

Why The Lights Flicker draws inspiration from moments of synchronicity in everyday life, with its title rooted in Hamm’s experience of lights flickering whenever he wrote songs in the house where he grew up, as well as ideas from Carl Jung’s book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.

”In the house that I grew up in, every time I’d write a song, the lights would flicker,” Hamm says while explaining the album title’s meaning, elaborating that he was also inspired by analytical psychologist Carl Jung’s 1960 book Synchronicity. “If you pay attention to the world around you, you notice these moments of synchronicities that break the barriers of time,” he states. “That is why the lights flicker, and it’s why this album is the peak of what we’re about. As an artist, I completely conduct my entire life so that when I get struck by the purity of the universe, I’m ready to be a channel for that energy.”

“Everything that we’ve learned—playing live to people and trying to give them this feral reaction where they can lose themselves in the intensity of rock and roll—came together while recording,” Hamm adds while talking about the culmination of the band’s efforts that produced Why the Lights Flicker. “It’s our beautiful stab at trying to make a quintessential album inspired by the New York City greats.” Indeed, this is thick and swaggering rock music that’s draped across the chassis of Why the Lights Flicker’s 20 tracks—a collection of buzzsaw guitars and raucous energy that addresses longing, love, and loss, or as Hamm sums it up, “the result of the entire life that I’ve lived up until this point.”

Telescreens 2026 tour dates

7/7 – The Gaslight – Nantucket MA
7/8 – The Gaslight – Nantucket MA
7/18 – The Stephen Talkhouse – Amagansett NY
8/6 – Toads Place – New Haven CT *
8/7 – Stone Pony – Asbury Park NJ *

* supporting Dogpark

Pre-order Why The Lights Flicker by Telescreens HERE