NEXT WEEK’S WASHING – “CLEAR EYES”
INDEPENDENT
Continuing to push beyond the sound established on their breakout debut EP, Toronto indie quintet Next Week’s Washing shares “Clear Eyes,” a massive, dreamy, and cinematic new single that brings alternative rock energy together with densely layered shoegaze. Taken from the band’s forthcoming sophomore EP, Spiral, set for release on November 13th, the track represents their most expansive recording yet, combining walls of textured instrumentation with upfront vocals and a growing confidence in the sound they can distinctly call their own.
“Clear Eyes” was the first song Next Week’s Washing wrote after completing their debut EP. Rather than starting over, the band approached the track as an opportunity to take the foundations they had already established and push them somewhere bigger.
That progression can be heard throughout the track. While the instrumentation leans heavily into the band’s shoegaze influences, Next Week’s Washing deliberately pushed the vocals forward in the mix, allowing the songwriting to remain present within the song’s towering layers of guitars. The result lands somewhere between the immersive atmosphere of shoegaze and the immediacy of alternative and indie rock, bringing the different sides of the band’s identity into sharper focus.
For Next Week’s Washing, that convergence of influences is precisely what makes “Clear Eyes” significant. Rather than sounding indebted to any single reference point, the band sees the track as one of the clearest representations yet of what their own sound can become.
“It’s probably the truest blend of all our influences that we’ve ever written,” they share. “It feels like something only Next Week’s Washing could’ve written, and we’re proud of that.”
The song’s title arrived only after the music and lyrics were already complete. Fans of the television series Friday Night Lights, the band found themselves returning to Coach Taylor’s recurring mantra, “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” The phrase unexpectedly aligned with the meaning they had already discovered within the song, giving the track its name and adding another layer to its perspective.
“Clear Eyes” describes how it feels to move through life when you’re young and everything is in flux. Sometimes you thrive on the uncertainty and at other times you really want straight answers or a direct path forward. You can get knocked around quite a bit, even when you try to plan ahead or think things through. Ultimately the song is a call to trust your instincts and enjoy the ride – we’re all in it together.
One of the recording’s defining moments emerged just as spontaneously. The song’s breakdown was initially conceived as entirely instrumental, but after hearing the completed arrangement in the studio, the band felt something was missing. They wrote a short poem to test over the section, unsure whether the words would work rhythmically against the music. When Miles stepped up to record it, the experiment immediately clicked.
That instinctive moment reflects the larger evolution behind “Clear Eyes.” As Next Week’s Washing progress into the era of their second EP, the band are becoming increasingly comfortable expanding their arrangements without sacrificing the directness at the heart of their songwriting. The scale may be growing, but their perspective remains grounded in documenting the world as they experience it.
“When we’re writing a song, we like to try and embody the perspective that our generation has on the world,” the band explains. “We feel like it’s part of our duty as we’re coming up with the next generation of great music.”
You didn’t know you needed them until you did. Next Week’s Washing merges shimmering shoegaze soundscapes with post-punk bite and ’90s Britpop styling into a magnetic wall of sound that eschews nostalgia to create something entirely their own. Formed in Toronto in 2024 by Rhys Newman, brothers Miles and Julian Duffy, Ben Sawyer, and Evan de Castro, the band has quickly become one of the city’s most exciting emerging alternative acts, earning recognition for emotionally resonant songwriting and electrifying live performances.
Released earlier this year, their self-titled debut EP combined shoegaze textures with rock energy and present vocals, leading to support from DKFM Shoegaze Radio, Kool Rock Radio, and independent stations around the world. After being discovered by Sheffield’s ForgeMaster Records, the band released their debut EP on cassette in both Canada and the UK, with the UK pressing selling out in less than a day. They’ve since surpassed 40,000 Spotify streams, performed showcases including Exclaim!’s Class of 2026, and continue to build momentum as one of Canada’s most promising young guitar bands.
Rooted in themes of young identity and the realities of life for young people today, Next Week’s Washing continues writing music that reflects the world that they are living in and in doing so, representing their peer group. With “Clear Eyes,” the band takes the foundations of their debut EP and blows them outward. Massive yet melodic, dreamy yet immediate, the single captures a young band beginning to understand exactly what makes its sound distinctive and pushing that identity toward something bigger.
ARTIST QUOTE
“We wanted to take the sound we had begun to develop with the first six songs and push it forward. We took a lot more time building layers into the recording, and the result is our biggest (sonically) sounding song yet.”
Next Week’s Washing
Spiral
(Independent)
Release Date: November 13, 2026
Artist Links
Background Photo Credit: Hayden Armstrong
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