Brunch put out a double A-side single, Please Kill Me and Man Alive

Brunch have released a double A-side single pairing two new songs, Please Kill Me and Man Alive, The Line of Best Fit reported on August 14. A home movie style video for Please Kill Me was filmed at Devil's Bowl Speedway in Vermont, including a full electric performance on the dirt track after a four car pileup had delayed the night's racing.

Brunch are guitarists Philip Bern and Cameron Mincar, bassist Mason Kosman and drummer Ayden Flanigan, who formed the band in Burlington while studying philosophy together at the University of Vermont. Please Kill Me takes its title from the oral history of punk by Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil, and the band describe the song as drawing on Phil Spector's Wall of Sound and psych-era Beatles.

The band describe "Man Alive" as being about the struggle of being human "while holding onto radical hopefulness and love for others," built from what they call radical antagonisms: light and darkness, dreams and reality, each defining itself by its opposite.

The single follows Brunch's 2023 debut indie album Parasocial, the 2024 EP Doginya, and last year's live EP Live At Robot Dog. The band marked the new release with a show at Brooklyn's Purgatory, and say they are already working on another record.

The band described the video shoot itself: "Halfway through the race there was a huge four car pileup that took a construction crew 30 minutes to remove," they said. "After the race the owners let us onto the tracks in our van and we set up right in the middle and played along."