Today prog-rock journeymen Dopapod released their fourth single “Fannie” from their upcoming self-titled seventh album, due out May 27th. The song finds the band leaning into the kaleidoscopic mystery laying on the other side of the black hole. A daydream-like journey through time and space, the song opens with a hypnotizing, bluesy guitar arrangement overtop elusive ambient soundscapes. The song’s narrator finds himself musing on the various gifts and delicacies he wants to treat his titular love Fannie with. The character dreams of taking her on a fancy date and to the movies after. “Take her to the movies is there anything that's good? / She's into Kurosawa and karate, want to treat my Fannie.”
Glowing keys and a steady drumbeat underscore the song’s uncanniness, a dream within a dream. After a series of interpretive vignettes at the restaurant, the narrator takes Fannie back to his apartment, before the dream vanishes. Fannie is reading a note that is slipped under her door from the narrator. A closing sequence swells and churns the band’s sonics through dreamlike splendor. Under the Radar says “The band’s psychedelic alchemy works perfect with the track’s simmering pace and lets the track wind onwards with an irresistible allure.”
“The lyrics have a cool ring to them. They lend themselves to being interpreted in a lot of different ways by the listener,” says Dopapod’s Rob Campa. “We leaned on the groove, and it all worked together.”
The animated video for “Fannie” is the latest chapter in the band’s “Building A Time Machine” series, an episodic offering that plays with themes of space, time travel, and symmetry, concepts that are ever-present in Dopapod’s output. The new release comes on the heels of recent single releases "Think,” "Grow," and “Black Holes,” which build out Dopapod’s ever-expansive sonic range with interpretive and lyrical themes, and set in motion a compendium animated short film project created with partners Tandem Media that is being released episodically.
In addition to new music, the band will be releasing an immersive tabletop board game Building a Time Machine that takes players through the history and lore of the group. Designed by the band’s longtime team member and former lighting designer Luke Stratton. Built into the gatefold vinyl packaging of their upcoming album, the game takes players through the past and present of the Dopapod universe as they collect pieces of their iconic palindrome logo to win. To accompany the game the band is offering multiple merch bundles that include game accessories such as Meeple Pawns, Dice, Game Piece Baggies, and Dopapod themed pads and pencils for keeping score.
As always, there’s more to Dopapod’s vision with the union of the physical and digital elements. “It does feel like we made all these albums and made a time machine,” says Compa, “And now we’re at the new frontier, wherever we're going.”
After nearly a decade of developing their craft, the quartet—Eli Winderman [keys, vocals], Rob Compa [guitar, vocals], Chuck Jones [bass], and Neal “Fro” Evans [drums]—consciously present albums as experiences, meant to be shared out of your speakers, on stage and now in new interactive mediums such as the film project and the tabletop game created for this new album. With musical influences that range widely from metal to jazz and americana, and drawing inspiration from artists like Medeski Martin & Wood to Pink Floyd, Dopapod has created their own hypnotic hybrid of funk, rock, jazz, bluegrass, and electronica. Their ability to access a heightened level of cosmic harmony in their music bloomed brilliantly on 2009’s Radar, and continued to blossom on the following albums Never Odd Or Even [2014] and Megagem [2017]. Along the way, fan favorites such as “Present Ghosts” (2.4 million) and "Mucho" (1.7 million) raised their hand and garnered millions of streams on Spotify, and 2019’s studio offering Emit Time arrived at acclaim from Guitar World, Relix, Glide, Jambase, and more. Simultaneously, they sold out headline gigs and repeatedly graced the bills of hallmark festivals such as Electric Forest, Summer Camp, High Sierra, and Bonnaroo, where Rolling Stone named them among the festival’s “best-kept secrets.”
PRE-SAVE NEW ALBUM Dopapod: HERE
