Oh He Dead Releases VERTIGO Album, U.S. Tour Starts Oct. 9

Oh He Dead has released its new studio full-length album VERTIGO, available everywhere as of today. A U.S. tour in support of the record starts on October 9 at The Lititz Shirt Factory in Lititz, PA.

Recorded with Nashville-based producer Jimmy Mansfield (Eric Church, Lainey Wilson), VERTIGO is a heady amalgam of R&B and indie rock, sprinkled with a dusting of psych (and just a dash of disco).

The band broke out in 2018 with the groovy 'Lonely Sometimes,' when their video for NPR's Tiny Desk Contest went viral, attracting fans beyond their beloved D.C. Their self-titled album was released that same year, followed by Pretty in 2023 and its sister album, Ugly, in 2024.

They hit the road hard after Ugly's release. And while they rolled through cities and countries never visited before, they'd write, adding new layers to snatches of sound and whittling down the possibilities for a new album. The result is Vertigo, a dervish of an album whose cover features a dazed photo of frontman CJ Johnson's child, Wallace.

From 'Claire's Song,' a silky ode to friendship, to the hypnotically groovy 'Puts Me to Shame', Vertigo captures a band confidently stretching the definition of their 'sound'. The frenetic 'The Weight' started out as a straight-ahead rock song, they slid in a delicious layer of R&B sleaze. Salser wrote the spaced-out 'Bioluminescence' during Covid, convinced it would die on his hard drive. When the band played it at a local club, though, the crowd went wild. It was going on the record. The groovy of 'Up and Down' slides in next, before it all ends with the anthemic 'Butterfly' which visionary keyboardist Piano Whitman says is about uplifting women. 'I just kept thinking about this butterfly who has no idea how beautiful she is. We see this beauty in this little bug that brings so much joy and has so much meaning attached to it. And they're really fragile, but they're quite resilient. They keep flying, even with broken wings.'

And so do bands, even when they're dizzy, even when they're tired, even when they're reeling - because music brings them joy.

Tickets for the tour are available at ohhedeadmusic.com/tour.