B-Side Guys

Twenty-six words. That’s all Demora needs to drill straight through your chest on “torpor,” their latest single and title track from an upcoming EP on Cherub Dream Records. The San Francisco trio has mastered the art of saying less while meaning more, crafting a song that turns morning light into an adversary and repetition into a weapon.

The production builds on this economy of expression, with dusty lead guitars that recall Dinosaur Jr. but resist the temptation to drown everything in distortion. Instead, the band creates negative space around vocalist Johnny’s sparse confessions: “i left the curtain open to wake with the morning light/it doesn’t seem to be working.” It’s the sonic equivalent of staring at your ceiling at 4 AM, waiting for dawn to either save or condemn you.

What’s particularly striking is how the arrangement mirrors the cyclic nature of anxiety itself. The mantra-like repetition of “just like you do” doesn’t seek resolution—it simply circles back on itself, each iteration worn smoother than the last, like worry beads in reverse. The band’s stated influences (Sunny Day Real Estate, Duster) show through not in imitation but in their understanding of how to use volume dynamics as emotional punctuation.

This first glimpse of their February EP suggests Demora has found their sweet spot between shoegaze’s wall-of-sound traditions and emo’s confessional intimacy. They’re proof that sometimes the heaviest moments come not from cranking everything to eleven, but from knowing exactly when to hold back.