π - Pre-Order expected to ship April 22nd 2026
pink balloons went pop, and now everything's in black and white.
When Ekko Astral dropped their searing debutΒ pink balloonsΒ in 2024, it would be another year and change before Trump took office and deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C. Recorded immediately after the 2024 U.S. General Election, Ekko Astralβs second albumΒ the beltway is burningΒ was always intended as a real-time historical document in the form of a dark comedy. Each song plays out like a vignette, with Ekko Astral beckoning listeners into their fictionalized version of The Beltway (the area within I-495), in which Adam Sandler is a god-president and the DMV has become a demilitarized zone, a wasteland run by butt rockers and Soundcloud rappers.
On the surrealist lead single βlil xan goes to washington,β the titular character travels to D.C. to lobby for addiction assistance legislation before succumbing to the cartoonish horror that is K Street (where all major lobbying firms are based), ultimately becoming a sellout himself. Such noisy, absurd caricatures abound onΒ beltway, whose anchors are simultaneously heavier, poppier, and more complex than on predecessor pink balloons.
Take the albumβs pop diamond βlovesick american romanceβ: a 90s rock-indebted anthem that snarls at mainstream cultureβs embrace of the manosphere. And then thereβs the albumβs centerpiece, βthis is not a call to action but a lamentation on the situation at hand (or, capital riot),β which sees the band take an entirely new direction in a stretched-out, climactic barn-burner that invites listeners into the bandβs funhouse version of D.C.
Where pink balloons was written to uplift,Β the beltway is burningΒ is meant to remind you of the stakes. On penultimate track βblood mountain,β Holzman asks βif I donβt know whatβs wrong / how can it be righted?β This kind of tension is omnipresent in Ekko Astralβs work, groundingΒ beltwayΒ in our present reality, injecting urgency and realism into each song despite their surrealist contours.
Track List:
- body generation
- lil xan goes to washington
- horseglue
- beltway (feat. pop music fever dream)
- wmata
- this is not a call to action but a lamentation on the situation at hand (or, capital riot)
- elegy for a system (feat. big girl)
- lovesick american romance
- dude with guitars
- sandler '36
- blood mountain
- comet ping pong