Shoegaze and UFOs go together like chocolate and peanut butter for Orlando’s Saucers Over Washington

You don’t have to wonder what David Duchovny would sound like as a musician because the X-Files star has already crossed that divide. But ponder what Fox Mulder might sound like if he had his own band, and then things get kinda interesting. Now if that band were a shoegaze act, well, that’s the stuff of absolute fanfic fantasy. As it turns out, that hypothetical would probably sound a lot like actual Orlando band Saucers Over Washington.

That’s because this emerging act is built on the dual pillars of shoegaze and aliens. If this seems particularly niche, just wait; that’s just the welcome mat to this rabbit hole. Pairing those two interests began first as an idea for an album but ultimately blossomed into a blanket concept for the band itself. Though that sounds a little left-field, it’s not when you factor in that bandleader Nik Sidella has been formally merging those two specific pet obsessions for years in not just Saucers Over Washington but in the “Aliengazing Podcast,” a show he co-hosts with Tom Wilkerson that features both UFO discussion and shoegaze music as if they were natural twins. Well, Saucers Over Washington may be onto something.

Saucers have been working to find new, discrete footing since departing their previous guise as indie-punkers the Grizzly Atoms. In late 2021, they officially marked that chapter with the tellingly titled Transitions EP, a split collection between the two bands. Now, at long last, the just-released single “Desert Sky” is the first new SOW material since the turning of that page, and it is an unequivocal dive into pure
shoegaze euphoria.

“Desert Sky” checks the paranormal box with lyrics about a couple on a transcendental odyssey through the desert in pursuit of their cosmic origins. Sonically, the song is a textbook shoegaze drive, with layers of fog thicker and woozier than ever heard from the band before. Between the ethereal, starlit melodies and the gorgeously dense haze, Saucers are now drifting at an altitude closer to the heavens of My Bloody Valentine than their earthier hybrid of noise and 1990s alt-rock from before.

“Desert Sky” is the first, very auspicious look at an album’s worth of Saucers Over Washington songs already completed. The single now streams everywhere and atop TLU’s Spotify Playlist. But on Bandcamp, it’s available as both a name-your-price download and a very limited cassette release packaged like an old-school top-secret government file that probably (hopefully) won’t self-destruct in five seconds.

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