Federale - I Want A New Drug single

Release date: October 1st 2026

Artist Information

  • Label: Jealous Butcher Records
  • Genre: Psychedelic Rock
  • Hometown: Portland, OR
  • RIYL: Echo & the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, Ride, Nick Cave

Biography

A 30-day eviction notice appeared on the door of the studio where cinematic psych-rock band Federale records. Frontman and primary songwriter Collin Hegna stared at it for five minutes, picked up his guitar, wrote a song, and texted his bandmates to book a recording session.

That scene repeated itself multiple times over the course of a year, fueling a series of back-against-the-wall writing and recording sessions. Portland, Oregon’s Revolver Studios wasn’t just Federale’s headquarters, it was Hegna’s livelihood. He founded the studio, housed all of his recording gear there, and built much of his creative life within its walls. The uncertainty of losing both his workplace and his band’s home base became intertwined with a broader sense of discord and confusion he sensed in the world.

The result is Love & Other Lies, the most immediate and personal album in the beloved Portland band’s seven-album oeuvre.

“It’s funny, I played the album for someone who used to be in the band, and he said, ‘This is the album you always wanted to make,’” Hegna says. “It’s more true to me in terms of my influences, and there are personal experiences on this record. I’ve never really done that before. My writing has usually been focused on narrative characters and cinematic storytelling.”

Since being founded by Hegna in 2004, Federale has released seven cinematic records inspired by obscure spaghetti westerns, folk-based murder ballads, '60s and ‘70s European soundtracks, particularly the Italian horror movie genre Giallo, and stylishly dramatic vocalists such as Lee Hazelwood and Nick Cave.

Federale’s music has appeared in films, including A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Bad Batch, and The Lego Movie, while the band has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe, performing at festivals including Levitation, Austin Psych Fest, Freakout Fest, Treefort Music Fest, Pickathon, Mexicadelia, Northwest Psychfest, and PDX Pop Now! Most recently, the band completed a tour supporting The Brian Jonestown Massacre and is set to return to Europe.

Hegna is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, recording engineer, and sonic auteur. He has played bass with The Brian Jonestown Massacre since 2004. As the owner of Revolver Studios, he has produced and recorded artists including The Shivas, Roselit Bone, Jenny Don’t & The Spurs, Joel Gion, Matthew J. Tow, and David J. He also oversaw the music for the Emmy-nominated Super Bowl commercial “Halftime in America.”

Love & Other Lies teems with a dark sentimentality and a pronounced gloomy sensibility drawing from British new wave, post-punk, goth, and 1960s rock n’ roll. Strains of The Cure, Depeche Mode, The Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Tears for Fears, and even The Beatles abound. Hegna’s emotive baritone is swathed in period-perfect Prophet-5 synthesizers and glistening counter-melody guitars lines, and supported by intricate but lyrical basslines and cold and mechanical drums.

The lyrics are veiled, visceral, and abstract, yet peppered with shard’s of truth from Hegna’s life and his observations. They reflect a modern world where reality itself feels increasingly tenuous, truth is subjective, communities are shattered by irreconcilable division, and a collective malaise hangs in the air. In this dystopia, if love is merely another lie, it suggests a bleak outlook for our future; essentially, the title is a fancy way of saying that "We Are All Fucked."

Love & Other Lies picks up where it’s previous album, Reverb & Seduction, left off. That album was a radical departure from Federale’s previous releases which featured mostly instrumentals. “There are a lot more similarities than you think,” he says of the group’s seemingly two distinct aesthetic periods. “When we were referencing the obscure influences, we liked the drama and darkness. Those elements are in new wave, goth, and post-punk. I just grabbed another couple of colors from the Crayon box.”

The pressured atmosphere of writing didn’t allow for the grand overarching concepts and intricate orchestrations signature to Federale’s past records, making Love & Other Lies much more immediate and spontaneous. It unfolds like a high-speed midnight road trip, shadowing a narrator desperate to outrun the vices and violence of his past, melding Hegna’s penchant for immersive atmospherics with his love of classic song craft. “My favorite band is The Beatles, and I studied their music immensely. I love a good song and a good hook. You can hear that with The Cure, even their dark stuff was catchy,” Hegna says.

Imagine Huey Lewis & The News’ candy-coated hit I Want a New Drug subverted through the shadowy, gothic sensibilities of The Sisters of Mercy. Federale’s reimagining of the 1980s gem transforms it into the tragic portrait of a man consumed by an insatiable longing. He chases every vice to its darkest conclusion, only to discover that none can replicate the feeling of being held by the one he loves. It’s Huey’s anthem reflected through the cracked carnival mirror of obsession, addiction, and emotional ruin.

The performance oozes charred desperation made more palpable with Hegna’s shadowy baritone vocals, the hypnotic reverb-drenched rhythm guitar figures, and the primal drum machine-sounding beat. Washed-out textural moments that are sonically amorphous, harmony vocals, and a new wave horn section douse the detached cool with some delicious drama.

Hegna came up with the idea as a joke with his The Brian Jonestown Massacre bandmate Joel Gion. “I’ve always felt the song carried a deeper meaning than the glossy, cheesy ’80s production of the original by Huey Lewis & The News might lead you to believe. Its message is universal, and I wanted to cast it in a darker, more dramatic light, giving the underlying masterpiece a fresh perspective,” Hegna shares.

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