American Football share ‘No Feeling’ feat. Turnstile’s Brendan Yates, the second single from LP4 out May 1 via Polyvinyl
American Football’s fourth album arrives May 1 via Polyvinyl, and the Urbana, Illinois emo institution just released its second single, “No Feeling,” with a collaborator no one saw coming. Turnstile vocalist Brendan Yates recorded his harmonies for the track the day after the band casually invited him to stop by producer Sonny DiPerri’s Los Angeles studio. What was originally conceived as a crowd-blending gang vocal moment became something far more exposed, and far more powerful, once Yates started actually singing. The song and its animated video dropped on April 8, marking the band’s most significant pre-release statement since LP4’s announcement.
DiPerri, whose production credits include work with Nine Inch Nails, My Bloody Valentine, and Portugal. The Man, frames “No Feeling” in shimmering synths, chime-like guitars, and a vocal space wide enough for two distinct voices to occupy entirely different emotional registers. Frontman Mike Kinsella anchors the track in characteristic self-excavation: “Help me dig a hole / I’m already cold / I honestly never planned on getting old.” Above that confession, Yates provides the lift, not as contrast but as a kind of answer, the harmony Kinsella wrote but could not have anticipated would belong to someone else.
How a Gang Vocal Moment Became the Song’s Defining Voice
Kinsella described the studio session in detail, making clear that Yates’ contribution evolved far beyond the original brief. “Brendan came into the studio to sing along to a ‘gang vocal’ call-and-response part I’d written for the chorus of ‘No Feeling,'” Kinsella said. “I had imagined his voice would be one of many voices scream-singing it, and was excited for it to be a sort of Easter Egg on the album. But after tracking the original parts, he asked if he could try a higher harmony that he was hearing. As soon as he started singing it, all of our jaws dropped, and we all were looking at each other like ‘Oh shit! THAT’S the dude from Turnstile!’ His voice is so singular, and once he sang the part in his range, it was clear that the part now belonged to him and him alone.”
In a separate interview with SPIN, Kinsella elaborated on the speed of the session: “We have videos of him sitting on a couch at Sonny’s, learning the part, singing it and finding his voice in it. By the time we stacked three harmonies on, we’re like, holy fuck, that sounds so awesome.” The result is a track press materials describe as finding American Football “at a point of no return, teetering on the edge of self-destruction, where feeling itself loses meaning.” Yates’ harmonies do not soften that position. They make it feel inevitable.
A Video About Ghosts, Submarines, and Beautiful Afterlives Interrupted
The accompanying video, directed by Cady Buche and Travis Barron of Unlimited Time Only, the same team behind visuals for Khruangbin, Leon Bridges, and Little Dragon, translates the song’s emotional logic into hallucinogenic animation. Buche and Barron described their concept in a statement:
When we listened to ‘No Feeling’ for the first time, we thought a lot about mysterious places like outer space and the bottom of the ocean. The music also brought to mind the idea of going down with the ship or a sense of crushing inevitability. Then we thought, what if you flipped that? What if you opened on a sunken ship and that was the beginning? What if this sunken ship were a thriving habitat for ghosts who live there? What if something came along that jeopardized their beautiful afterlife?”
The result is a deep-sea ghost story that matches the song’s atmosphere without illustrating it literally.
“No Feeling” arrives in a week where the song’s context has been unavoidably complicated. Turnstile recently issued a statement following an alleged incident involving former guitarist Brady Ebert, who is accused of deliberately striking Yates’ father with a car. “We have no language left for Brady,” the band said. That the collaboration exists at all, and that it sounds the way it does, generous and bruised at once, makes it a more quietly charged release than either band could have planned.
American Football (LP4) follows 2019’s American Football (LP3) and carries additional guest appearances from Rainer Maria frontwoman Caithlin De Marrais and Wisp’s Natalie R. Lu. A world tour supporting the album kicks off May 15 in Denver and runs through August, with European and UK dates included. Tickets from every show benefit Safe Passage International and The Illinois Coalition for Immigration and Refugee Rights via the band’s partnership with PLUS1.
