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Nov 30, 2023 By Caleb Campbell

Last year, Minneapolis outfit Sleeping Jesus shared their full-length debut album, Leave The Party Early, introducing the band’s yearning and sincere style of indie rock. However, in contrast to their hazy debut, the band’s latest releases have been hitting a more direct and fervent pitch while retaining the same heartfelt charm. Those elements come together with the band’s forthcoming sophomore album, Hollywood Smile, out on December 4th. The band have already shared a pair of new singles from the record, “Ferdy” and “Twenty Five,” and today they’re back with an early listen to one of the album’s highlights, “Sleeping Dog,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Sleeping Dog” hits like an early morning wash of sunlight, opening with understated acoustics and twinkling keys before filling the track out with pounding bass notes and warm waves of psychedelic effects. They then leaven the track with pointed bursts of guitar, building to a raucous climax colored by a textured haze of effects. Coupled with lead singer Nick Elstad’s dreamy vocal performance, the band cultivates an effort that is both blissful and magnetic, nodding to classic rock touchstones and refracting them through the band’s bleary stylings.

Elstad says of the track, “‘Sleeping Dog’ came to me from a songwriting exercise. I had been taking a songwriting class through School of Song with Eric D. Johnson of Fruit Bats. And if I remember correctly, the prompt was something along the lines of writing about what is immediately around you rather than trying to dig deep for something. And there was my tired eye pup, George, seated right beside me. So he became the fuel for this song. The song is really a snapshot of what was happening in my life at that exact moment in time. I had been listening to a lot of Big Star around then and loved their line ‘Tell him what we said about paint it black,’ so I included a similar line as a homage. ‘Found your dad’s old stash in the family bible, listen to paint it black while we talk in circles.’”

Check out the song below. Hollywood Smile is out on December 4th.