The Roland Space Echo is a tape delay unit from the 1970s that records a sound onto a loop of magnetic tape and plays it back a moment later, a little more worn each time around. Trace Remains brought one into Pittsburgh’s Red Caiman Studios and The Church Recording Studio for their EP Zero Hour, which suits a band named for what lingers after something passes. The name nods to a song by Rites of Spring, the mid-80s Washington, DC band widely credited with starting emo, and the five-piece carries that lineage into “Breathing Air,” a single paired with a cinematic video.

The members have logged close to two decades in Pittsburgh’s DIY scene, and the track stretches that post-hardcore background wide. Angular guitars and punk drive sit alongside synthesizers and string arrangements, with the tape echo trailing behind them.

Zero Hour circles loss, reinvention and mental health, along with the hard lesson that time and health are the most valuable things a person has. A title as basic as “Breathing Air” points straight at that lesson, naming the plainest act of staying alive, the one nobody notices until it gets difficult.

Trace Remains make that awareness sound urgent. Every repeat off a tape machine fades a little, and the band plays like they know it, pushing every note out at full force while it still lasts.