B-Side Guys

The word “CYCLONE” never actually appears in “CYCLONE.” The word “cycle” does, four times in the chorus, caught in a cycle, stuck in a dream, and the title takes that smaller word and lets it spin out into something bigger, a storm built from a single syllable stretched past its own size.

The song backs up that inflation with actual motion. The bridge spins through the same four lines, “no one really knows, what’s surely going on, only I know,” four times over without changing a word, a wheel turning past the point anyone’s still counting revolutions. Even the kaleidoscope image in the second verse works the same way, a life fractured into repeating fragments that rearrange themselves but never actually go anywhere new.

That spinning motif carries real weight given who wrote it. Joseph Carag and Legend Pham were introduced specifically because of their shared ties to Hawaii, where producer Cameron Kuwada paired them up on that connection alone. Cyclones are actual weather where they’re from, which gives the title’s spin real ground to stand on beyond the pun. The full lineup, drummer Andrew Chegash and guitarists Tyler Parson and Joseph Son, rounds out a band that’s grown from a two-person Seattle project into a five-piece since 2024, all while the core idea, that same word spinning back on itself, stayed intact.

By the time the wordless na-na-na hook arrives, explanation gives way to pure momentum, turning private confusion into the kind of hook a whole room can shout back. That release is the actual payoff, a moment built purely to be sung, together, at full volume.