So So Modern are breaking a 13-year silence. The Wellington post-punk outfit have announced Light Years, a six-track EP due for release on 9 October via Flying Nun Records and Holiday Records, their first new material in over a decade.
The EP’s lead single, ‘Peace Talks’, premiered back in early August, with the rest of the tracklist, ‘Apocalypse Wow’, ‘For Life’, ‘Eat You Alive’, ‘Endless Mirrored Skyway’ and ‘Go Higher’, following on release day. Vinyl will come in two pressings: pink and white through Flying Nun, and orange and black via Holiday Records, both wrapped in artwork designed by Lily Paris West of Mermaidens.
The band built their name through the late 2000s and early 2010s as one of Wellington’s most reliably ferocious live acts, sharing stages with Foals, CSS, Deerhoof and Dirty Projectors along the way. After years largely out of the spotlight, they’ve eased back into performing at Camp a Low Hum in 2024 and at Great Sounds Great, and Light Years marks the first genuinely new studio output to follow.
The band describe the new songs as a real change of direction: gone is the tangled, maximalist mix of synths, guitars and rhythm that defined their earlier work, replaced by something plainer and more direct. Lyrically, the EP looks back on growing up inside Aotearoa’s late 90s and early 2000s hardcore, DIY and straight edge scenes.
To mark the release, So So Modern will play a strictly capped show at Newtown Community Centre in Wellington on Saturday 7 November: an all-ages matinee at 3pm and an R18 show at 6:30pm. Tickets are on sale through Under the Radar, and fans can also pick up exclusive merch designed by illustrator Toby Morris on the night.
For a band that spent over a decade largely off the radar, it’s a low-key but genuinely exciting return, the kind of homecoming that rewards the people who never stopped putting them on their ‘must-see live’ list.
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