B-Side Guys

Between Volvo commercials and Charli XCX support slots, D.C.’s Color Palette has mastered the art of making dreamy indie rock palatable for mainstream consumption. But on “Grateful,” the five-piece outfit led by Jay Nemeyer strips away the gloss to examine the messier corners of their sound—and their hearts.

The track opens in a physical space most songwriters would rather forget: an empty apartment littered with UHaul boxes, where “your face plays like a movie” and the ghost of Anthropologie bedsheets lingers in the air. It’s precisely the kind of granular detail that grounds the band’s shoegaze tendencies in tangible reality, creating tension between ethereal sonics and earthbound imagery.

This push-pull dynamic defines the production throughout. The promised earworm guitar riff arrives exactly when needed, cutting through layers of dreamy synths like sunlight through storm clouds. Meanwhile, the rhythm section provides more than just energy—it creates a sense of forward momentum that mirrors the song’s emotional trajectory from loss to acceptance.

What’s particularly striking is how Nemeyer manages to make gratitude sound both hard-won and slightly dangerous. When he declares “I’m grateful for the mess that I made,” the fuzzed-out guitars suggest this thankfulness comes with an edge. The repeated acknowledgment of “all the sleepless nights, all the fights” doesn’t seek to sanitize the experience, instead finding value in the very rawness of the memory.

For a band that’s scored a Wammie Award and landed placements everywhere from ESPN to MTV, “Grateful” feels remarkably unguarded. It’s a reminder that even as Color Palette continues their commercial ascent toward a fall 2025 album release, they haven’t lost their ability to make pain shimmer.