Vundabar have been remixed by Water From Your Eyes on their song “Life Is A Movie,” the track is off their recently released LP Surgery and Pleasure. Vundabar is heading to the UK and Europe for a May tour, starting May 5th in Glasgow. Formed by Brandon Hagen (guitar, vocals) and Drew McDonald (drums), and later joined by Zack Abramo (bass), Vundabar cut their chops as part of the underground Brooklyn scene, at venues such as Silent Barn and Shea Stadium.

Vundabar’s singer/guitarist Brandon Hagen says of the remix “I really like where WFYE took Life Is A Movie for their remix. The vocal melody for the chorus sort of reminds me of Wall era Pink Floyd. Has that children singing feel to it. More generally it was nice to see where another artist chose to take the source material of our music.”

Vundabar recently signed to Loma Vista Recordings (Iggy Pop, Killer Mike) for their sixth full-length. They announced they would be joining the label last year with the release of their single and video ‘I Got Cracked’, followed by a second single and video, ‘Life Is a Movie’, both of which appear on Surgery and Pleasure. In January they released the single “Spades” alongside the announcement of their new record, followed by ‘I Need You’ in February.

Vundabar’s music has always progressed alongside its members, functioning as the band’s own coming-of-age tale. While the scrappiness of the band’s earliest days gave way to a different gravity as Hagen wrestled with his father’s illness on 2021’s Devil For The Fire, that was only the beginning. Off the road and away from the studio during the pandemic years, Hagen had focused on tending to his father, going through the deeply “psychedelic” experience of parenting his own parent, teaching him to read and walk again. After his father’s death in 2023 shortly after the loss of a long-term relationship, Hagen could’ve been overwhelmed by all the loss. But instead, he found himself faced with the all-encompassing intensity of it all and chose surrender. This led him to new material that was an evolution by way of going home.

Hagen’s answer for Vundabar’s new era arrived through deconstruction. After breaking his arm on tour in France, Hagen found himself physically unable to play with the band or to strum a guitar. He wrote this new Vundabar material completely differently, holed up alone and building layered guitar parts by recording individual pieces until they formed a whole. He’d been broken himself, and in turn broke down what the band was, gaining a better understanding along the way.

Hagen cycled through hundreds of compositions and after culling them down to the best and most vital cuts, Vundabar decamped to London and worked with producer Steph Marziano in May of 2023. Hagen sought an “extreme version of something very everyday and common.” He wrote many of the songs so that it could just as easily be about someone dying, the end of a relationship, or some unidentified something irrevocably breaking. All of it was interchangeable, leading to the same conclusion. “I was dealing with how to accept that change is inevitable,” Hagen explains. “These things can’t be fought. It’s about acceptance and empathy.”

“I was thinking of surgery as this process where you’re augmented forever,” Hagen reflects, gesturing at his now-healed arm, complete with a metal plate inside. That’s where Surgery And Pleasure ends up: Loss not as subtraction in life, but some kind of twisted addition to how we see the world around us. Musically, too, Vundabar have reemerged, the same but different than we’ve ever heard them. “When things are that extreme it almost simplifies them,” Hagen concludes. “It’s so much change, all you can do is accept it. There are these poles that are so strong that you’re pushed to a high, and everything becomes 3-D. That’s death — and I’m alive.”

Vundabar
Surgery and Pleasure
Track Listing:

01) Life Is A Movie
02) Beta Fish
03) Stallion Running
04) I Got Cracked
05) Spades
06) Let Me Bleed
07) Feels Like Forever
08) Hurricane
09) I Need You
10) Easy Does It
11) Why Is It So Hard To Say Goodbye

Vundabar 2025 Tour Dates

05/03/25 Sat- Glasgow, UK @ King Tut’s
05/04/25 Sun- Leeds, UK @ Gold Sounds
05/05/25 Mon- Manchester, UK @ The Deaf Institute
05/06/25 Tue- Birmingham, UK @ Hare and Hounds
05/08/25 Thu- London, UK @ Scala
05/09/25 Fri- Bristol, UK @ Strange Brew
05/10/25 Sat- Brighton, UK @ DUST
05/12/25 Mon- Brussels, BE @ AB Club
05/13/25 Tue- Cologne, DE @ Luxor
05/14/25 Wed- Berlin, DE @ Frannz Club
05/15/25 Thu- Warsaw, PL @ Hybrydy
05/17/25 Sat- Hamburg, DE @ Logo
05/18/25 Sun- Amsterdam, NE @ Paradiso Tollhuisten
05/20/25 Tue- Paris, FR @ La Maroquinerie
05/21/25 Wed- Lyon, FR @ Le Marche Gare

order tickets for Vundabar HERE