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Sep 20, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Ash Dye

Joey Nebulous is the indie pop project of Chicago-based singer/songwriter Joseph Farago. The project first began in Farago’s college dorm room in 2015 and has since evolved with a new line-up and new collaborations, cementing Joey’s style of joyous, irreverent, playful, and unabashedly queer pop music. Farago debuted with his 2019 effort, Give Yourself a Kiss For Me, and returned earlier this year with a new single “Break,” which he co-wrote with his musical hero, Frankie Cosmos.

This year, the band have been teasing their new album, Joey Spumoni Creamy Dreamy Party All The Time, their first on Dear Life Records. With a title like that, listeners can quickly figure out what they’re getting into: dizzying, colorful, and ultra-catchy pop music. As Farago puts it, the record revels in the passions that queer people have often been denigrated for loving, even the ones deemed superficial and tasteless. The band have already shared a string of new singles from the record, “Joey’s Tour,” “Dancefloor,” “Hi Hello Bike,” and “Pancake.” Today, they’re back with its final single, “Honeys in Hell,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Honeys in Hell” balances the band’s catchy side with a charming minimalist pop sensibility, largely centering the track on some sparse synth lines and longing falsetto harmonies. Though Farago goes on to fill the track out with some bass and percussion, the results still feel disarmingly simple and sweet, steeping his lyrics in winsome synth textures and infectious hooks. Meanwhile, Farago’s lyrics hit on an equally playful note as he dreams of all the parties and queer joy he might find in hell: “I can’t find a guy on earth so I might as well go to hell / There are so many honeys in hell / God has sent them all down there, so I might as well follow them / There are so many honeys in hell.”

As the band describes, “Since 2019, ‘Honeys in Hell’ has been a core part of the band’s live repertoire. It holds the classic Joey Nebulous sound: sparkling synth lines, high-pitched harmonies, and irreverent lyrics about Dante’s Inferno and gay people who love to party…If we’re all doomed, imagining a place to enjoy eternal damnation amongst the hottest people seems justifiably apt.”

Check out the song below. Joey Spumoni Creamy Dreamy Party All The Time is out October 6th via Dear Life Records.