Pittsburgh indie rock band have spent the past three years reshaping their sound. Formed in 2021, the band began as a duo between and before joined, as well as drummer each adding something distinctive to the project.
Their third album, ‘bitknot’, marks their first release as a three-piece following Walchonski’s departure. Released in May 2026, the record blends Kinsler’s electronic drum experimentation with Slocum’s vocals and distinctive visual word-building. Breakout single ‘Dior’ is a verifiable internet phenomenon gaining more than a million streams on Spotify alone, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story – a seething maximalist mesh of avant pop tropes, ‘bitknot’ easily ranks with the year’s best releases.
‘‘ is your first record as a three-piece, after Ryan Walchonski’s departure. How did becoming a smaller unit change the way you approached writing, recording and figuring out what feeble little horse could sound like?
I think it allowed us to experiment more, and it’s probably the reason people are saying it’s such a different sound. We don’t think it’s that different, but having a smaller crew made it easier to take risks and work through challenges musically.
It allowed us to go to a bunch of different places, which is kind of counterintuitive. Because there are fewer people with ideas to pull from, the ideas you end up going to can get wild.
There’s something quite deliberately DIY and almost anti-algorithmic about feeble little horse – from the way your earlier records were made in an insular environment to the GeoCities-inspired website and the visual world you’ve built around the band. What is it about the early, decentralised internet that feels so important to you now?
We have to be online, right? It’s such a big part of how we found our sound and how we found each other – or at least how I became part of the band. Seb and I met in real life, but then Seb listened to my SoundCloud and we talked over Instagram. It’s baked into the situation, so I feel like it’s just a way to reconcile with the place we’re stuck in.
We’re asking ourselves, ‘What parts of this are still human?’ or ‘What’s left over that feels inspiring that you want to lean into or investigate more?’ I have this idealistic idea that maybe we can get back to better, more human experiences of the internet instead of just being on Instagram Reels. I think it’s destroying our brains.
The way we like to make things is the most honest and creative way possible, so it suits our sound to play with those old internet themes. That whole abandoned GeoCities era of the ‘90s felt so human and exciting.
Lydia, you came into the band before you did the ‘modern tourism’ EP cover, and then joined musically despite having never played bass before – even using stickers on your bass to figure out the notes. Looking back, do you think that lack of conventional musical training actually helped shape the band’s sound?
Yeah, I was brought in for my voice, which is crazy because I was stalking our Instagram this morning and listened to the video of me recording ‘Grace (Outro)’ and I sound insane. The way I was singing was completely different, and I don’t remember deciding to sing differently.
They needed art for ‘modern tourism’, which I’m not on, and I volunteered to do it. I was in my commission zone on my iPad, doing all the art in my childhood bedroom, and they were cool with it.
In terms of my lack of musical training helping shape the band, it probably did – at least for me. I was in a girls’ choir for a long time, which helped me learn how to bullshit singing, matching pitch and harmonising.
Musically, I have no idea of anything. I sometimes wish I had gone to school for music. It’s a goal of mine to be a better bandmate and learn more instruments. I love making music, but I don’t even know what some of the notes are called so I just memorise them. I’d like to learn guitar in the future. Imagine the riffs I could come up with if I played guitar! Right now, I’m a bass player – I’m gonna say it.
I think it’s probably more interesting nowadays if a band does have conventional music training. I can think of two contemporary bands that went to music school and they’re so sick. I’m thinking of Kassie Krut and Palm.
The album feels like the result of a few years of gradually pulling apart and rebuilding the idea of what feeble little horse can be. Was there a particular point during those three years where you realised, “Okay, this is what the band is becoming”?
I think it was when we started thinking that we were a different band. Seb and I were trying to come up with band names like Baby Life. We were writing together and there was a moment where we realised ‘Wait, we’re still feeble little horse.’ I think it was just the act of continuing to create together and realising that those songs were still valid, even if they weren’t traditionally made the way we used to with Ryan.
What is your songwriting process now like without Ryan?
We have maybe two ways of making a song. Either I’ll make a beat and she’ll say whether it’s fire or not, or we’re just hanging out and we make a beat together. We’ll then either write the melody and lyrics together that day, or Lydia takes it home, sits on it for a while, and then comes back with some beautiful, almost fully formed idea. If we start with lyrics, it’s usually a poem that Lydia had that gets adapted.
Yeah, this was the case with ‘Picture’, and ‘Freak’. There have definitely been songs where the lyrics existed before the song, but they always get melded in to fit the song and serve it.
Sebastian, you’ve spoken about the production and electronic experimentation being a big part of the band’s sound, while Lydia has such a strong hand in the visual identity. How does the sonic and the visual side of the project feed into one another when you’re creating?
I think it’s just perfect. When I’m creating music, I don’t have a good mind’s eye. I’m not one of those people that thinks of songs in colours. I can just make songs, and Lydia will take the idea of the song and compress it and represent it in a visual way that made perfect sense the whole time but that I didn’t expect.
‘Dior’ has become a huge song for you, now passing a million Spotify streams. Did you recognise something different about that song when you were making it, or has its trajectory completely surprised you?
I do think it’s a sellable song because we’re naming a brand. Even calling it ‘Dior’ has an intrigue to it. I know that Addison Rae’s song was supposed to be called ‘Backseat’ but it was Charli XCX that told her to call it ‘Diet Pepsi’. I thought, ‘OK, let’s go that same route.’ It was previously called something different that wasn’t catchy enough, so it feels like we leaned into pop art in a way – Andy Warhol, Sheldon, the classic stuff that everybody can recognise. It’s poppy but not necessarily sonically. We get messy, and that’s interesting because people love drama. I can’t even really see ‘bitknot’ songs being that different from anything else but that’s just my perspective. When I hear ‘Hayday’, I’m like ‘Whoa, I cannot believe people are allowed to listen to that.’
I think it’s also very expected. I almost didn’t even want to develop it or put it on the record. It’s the most feeble little horse-sounding song. It could’ve been on ‘Girl With Fish’ and it wouldn’t have sounded that crazy. I love that song so much but when we played it for our manager and he loved it, I thought ‘Fuck… we really had a good thing going.’ He needs to hate it!
Going forward, do you want to continue leaning into that ‘dior’ sound or are you always looking to create something new?
I think we’re just going to write some more songs and see what they look like. If I can make a conscious effort, I want to keep getting more weird. That could look like a whole album that sounds like our song ‘Paris.’
I have no idea what the sound is going to be like going forward, which is an exciting feeling. I personally need to sit for a second and let my tank refill. After doing such a huge project, you feel completely empty with no thoughts left. We’re currently recharging, but I’d love to play with found sounds. Whatever we end up doing is going to be intuitive and explorative.
There are references to angel numbers throughout ‘bitknot’, culminating in 333 on ‘DMT’. What drew you towards that imagery, and did those numbers have a personal meaning for you or were you more interested in the ambiguity and symbolism around them?
I love Bladee. I’m not saying it’s directly influenced by his album ‘333’, but he loves playing with that stuff. He’s so inspiring. I’m also very superstitious, and have OCD, so I need things to be magically blessed.
Unfortunately our album is unblessed because I usually do twenty-two dots on a visual that I want to succeed, but I accidentally put twenty-one because I didn’t count it right. So the album art has the wrong numbers but we’ll see what happens. I have no idea what it means. I just love leaning into that type of thing – imagining that there’s some kind of magic angel. It’s a motif at this point.
You’re about to spend a lot of time on the road – including UK and European dates in November. How has playing live and travelling together changed the way you understand feeble little horse?
That’s such a good question. It’s not something I like to think about too much because I like to keep feeble little horse as a recording project that’s still in my head. It’s so not, though. It might mostly be a live act. Writing music is the passion of the project. If we could just make the music and then hire four strangers to tour, I wouldn’t be too upset about that.
With writing ‘bitknot’, I realised that I have to talk on the stage. Even with ‘Dior’, do I say what we beeped out or do I beep?
I do think there’s a fluidity between the recording project and the live show, and we’ve always loved playing together, in whatever iteration that is. It still feels very natural and fun, the same way that recording our songs is.
I don’t think we make music for stadiums. We can only get so big before our music doesn’t work live anymore. I don’t think that’s ever going to be a problem, nor do I think we’ll get to stadium-level ginormous. I like small venues where we’re seeing people’s faces and they’re crowdsurfing.
‘bitknot’ will receive a Zoetrope edition shortly, pre-order the vinyl HERE.
Catch feeble little horse live:
19 Button Factory
21 La Belle Angele
22 EartH Hall
23 EartH Hall –
24 Gorilla