Water From Your Eyes

About Water From Your Eyes

Water From Your Eyes started in 2016 when Nate Amos and Rachel Brown met at Purchase College in New York. They were both studying music and making experimental noise stuff separately before deciding to collaborate. Early on, they were firmly in harsh noise territory, the kind of abrasive electronic music that clears rooms. You wouldn't have predicted where they'd end up.

Their first couple releases were challenging in the way art school projects tend to be. Lots of distortion, found sounds, intentional discomfort. But something shifted around 2018 when they started incorporating more conventional song structures into the chaos. Not that they went soft, they just figured out how to hide hooks inside the wreckage. You can hear this transition on their 2019 self-titled album, where actual melodies started poking through the noise.

The breakthrough came with 2021's Structure. Suddenly they had songs that could pass as indie rock if you squinted, but still maintained that experimental edge. Pool became something of a calling card, this perfectly anxious track that sounds like someone having a panic attack at a house party. The album got them noticed outside the noise underground.

Then came Everyone's Crushed in 2023, and that's when things got weird in the best way. They signed to Matador, which seemed improbable for a band that had been making deliberately inaccessible music just a few years prior. The album is all over the place stylistically, jumping from the frantic energy of Funny Money to the almost tender Dedication to Dedications. When they say experimental pop, they mean it. These aren't just pop songs with some weird production choices. They're pulling from drum and bass, shoegaze, post-punk, noise, whatever fits the moment.

Rachel's vocals carry a lot of the weight. She can go from detached and conversational to completely unhinged within the same song. No Shame is a good example, starting relatively calm before dissolving into something more frantic. Nate's production is dense and layered, constantly shifting textures underneath the songs so nothing settles into a comfortable groove for too long.

They've been touring pretty relentlessly since Everyone's Crushed dropped, playing bigger venues than they probably expected. The live show is notably more chaotic than the records, which is saying something. They're based in Brooklyn now, firmly part of that experimental music scene but also operating slightly outside it because they're too poppy for the noise kids and too noisy for the indie crowd.

Right now they seem to be in that sweet spot where they can do basically whatever they want. They've built an audience that expects unpredictability, which is about as good a position as a band like this can hope for. No word on what's next, but safe bets aren't really their thing anyway.

Sets are tight and a little tense. Amos delivers vocals with the energy of someone reciting something true but uncomfortable. The crowd leans in rather than dances — noise and melody land harder when everyone's actually paying attention. Minimal between-song talk.

Known for Pool, Funny Money, No Shame, Dedicated to the One I Love, Iconic

See Water From Your Eyes Live