Sup everybody,

Hit is playing a Footlight Presents show at the Windjammer in Ridgewood (552 Grandview Ave) on Thursday, April 16th with 0 Conduit and Skeeter de Milo (video release). That’s two weeks from today, and Justin’s coming down for this one so you’ll get the full dual guitar Hit Experience™️. It’s 8:30 PM doors and I think we’re opening, so shoot to get there around then. Advance tix avail here.

As a show of goodwill, here’s another song snippet from our forthcoming album. This one’s called “Doorstop,” and I would say it’s one of the more tender songs of the batch.

Of the 14 songs we recorded, we’ve got eight working mixes so far, so it’s gettin’ there. It may not seem like it, but anytime I send one of these newsletters out, I’m bombarded with messages asking, “when’s this album gonna be done? I need it PRONTO. I’m fucking dying out here!” To that I say, we’re working on it. In fact, here’s proof. Charles and I are just out of frame, working extremely hard:

John Cale voice It would be soon…

Keep poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Just sending out a reminder that we’re playing a stacked show at Rubulad this Friday (March 20th) with Nicole Yun, The Library Is on Fire and Brood X. E-mail/DM me for the address, it’s in Bushwick. We’re on first at 8 PM.

We’re playing this one as a trio, and a couple poppier numbers will be dusted off to go with the more messed up sounding ones. One song we’ll play that’s both messed up and poppy is this one called “The Latch,” here’s a snippet of a WIP mix that starts at the top of the second verse and runs to the end of the track:

There is almost exactly one whole minute of audio that precedes this clip, which I am withholding. The ONLY way you’ll get to hear it is if you come to the show Friday. Your move…

Keep poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Hit is playing this stacked show at Rubulad in Bushwick on Friday, March 20th. We’ll be opening for Nicole Yun, the Library Is on Fire and Brood X. Gonna be a good one, hit me up for the address!

Also, the Beach Boys covers compilation I mentioned in the last newsletter is out now, featuring my cover of “Break Away” (which I unintentionally stylized as “Breakaway” whoops). There’s 42 other great covers, spanning the entire BB’s catalog (including Brian Wilson solo material, both released and unreleased). Check it out here and snag your digital copy. Suggested price is $15, and all proceeds go to the Oakland Immigrant Family Defense Fund.

Keep poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Just a reminder that this Tuesday (Feb 24th), Hit is playing the Gutter in Williamsburg (200 N. 14th St, Brooklyn). You can get tix here or at the door.

Music starts at 8 PM sharp with Will Moloney of Old Table, and we’re on third. We’ll be playing a slew of unreleased classics, including this one called “Serrated Sunshine”:

Speaking of classics, here’s another WIP snippet of a cover of the Beach Boys song “Break Away” that I’m working on for the next Beach Boys Club compilation:

Some may remember my cover of “This Whole World” for their last compilation:

Alright, I think that’s enough media to justify sending a second newsletter about Tuesday’s show. Hope to see you there!

Keep poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Hit is playing a show February 24th at the Gutter in Williamsburg (200 N 14th Street, Brooklyn). It’s presented by Our Wicked Lady, and the bill features Will Moloney of Old Table, Cellophane Kiss and Aim for the Bushes. You can get advance tix here.

Tru Hitheads will remember all our triumphs at the old OWL, rocking our unique brand of noise rock and jangle pop to tens of people. Ancient New Yorkers will also recall that time the guy with Ebola went bowling there and they had to shut it down and send in people in hazmat suits. The confluence of these things is surely not to be missed. Plus just think about how freaking epic it will be to see us play at a bowling alley, in a ticketed room separate from the bowling alley part. We’re gonna be like Blues Traveler in Kingpin. I’m gonna gain the weight and everything!

In other news, last week I wrote a review for Pitchfork of the great new Railings album. Depending on whether you’ve maxed out your free articles for the month, you can read it here. I’ve never pitched writing anything before, and have only ever written for Talkhouse thanks to sheer nepotism, so cold emailing Pitchfork on a lark and getting a near-immediate response was a fun surprise. Not sure I’ll try again as the delight of batting 1.000 outweighs any ambition I have, but we’ll see. At any rate, you should check out this album and the whole Railings back catalog, it’s all insanely good and criminally unsung.

You should also check out Ian’s new album Imbue, which Obscure Sound called “an atmospheric gem of an album.” So many great textures and sounds, I think my favorite is “The World’s Funniest Weather.”

Keep Poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Just sending out a reminder that the first 1WT show of the year, and first one in a long ass time, is this Wednesday (January 14th) at Sleepwalk (251 Bushwick Ave). It features a great bill I’m really excited for: Hit is playing, along with Wild Lawn and Railings. You can get tix here or at the door. For any working stiffs, the show is conveniently timed — doors are at 7, whole show will wrap before 10 PM — and plus it’s the first Hit show since last July. Music starts at 7:30 sharp with Railings, who just put out a great new album.

See you Wednesday, or see you…… in hell!!!!!

Keep Poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

The first 1WT show of 2026 is January 14th at Sleepwalk (251 Bushwick Ave). Hit is playing, along with Wild Lawn and Railings. This will be the first Hit show in SIX months, so not going would be seriously messed up. Just deeply immoral. Doors are at 7 and music starts at 7:30, meaning everything should wrap by 10. Perfect for anyone who’s got work in the morning! You can get tix here.

This past Saturday was the first Miracle Sweepstakes show in ten months, and despite us only practicing once (I got the flu at Thanksgiving, thanks mom 🙄), it went well! John V. Variety bootlegged pretty much the entire set. Here’s a brand new one that for now at least is called “MS Dream”:

Pixelation is my bad, I think some of these got crushed by my phone’s bad reception. We actually had a multi-camera setup, as this will be eventually seeing theatrical release. Here’s a snippet of the song from Paul Thomas “zit remedies” Anderson:

We also played some other still yet-to-be-recorded tunes that have featured in the newsletter before. This one is called “Lambchop,” it’s the shortest MS song ever:

And this one is called “Axeman’s Delight”:

We dusted off some classics too. Here’s “Shoot the Blue” with a lil’ extra vocal help:

As well as “Rapture,” which is off our first album. Most people don’t own it..

Shout out to the Shell for having us. I didn’t get any vids but DEADHORSE and Pigeon also rocked it. The chorus to Pigeon’s song “Kingdom” in particular has been rattling around in my head all week:

There’s more where that came from in 2026. Until then,

KEEP POUNDIN’

Craig

Sup everybody,

Miracle Sweepstakes is playing a show this Saturday, December 13th at a house venue in Bushwick called the Shell. Also on the bill are Pigeon and Deadhorse. It starts at 8 and we’re on first. If you wanna go, just hit me up and I’ll send ya the address. We’ll be playing songs from all our albums, including one that doesn’t even exist yet! It’s the first MS show since February and who knows when we’ll play another house show, so only a lowly hater would skip this one.

In other news, the new Hit album is basically fully tracked, we just gotta mix it. I’ve also been messing around demoing songs for a possible solo project, including this one the other week called “Magnetar”:

Like those sick drum fills? Stay tuned for more new music in 2026. Until then—

Keep Poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

The new Hit single “Pure Unreal” is out now! The music video is premiering on Get Alternative here, and the song is streaming here on Spotify and here on Apple Music. If you use something more esoteric (Tidal, Amazon, et al), it might be linked here.

I think this one’s up there with “Shoot the Blue” and “Relative Mind” as one of the catchiest songs I’ve ever written. If you agree, tell a friend! I really don’t know how else music can get heard in today’s world. Maybe I should offer royalties on the song to anyone who’s a shooter for it like some sort of ESOP or something. We could make “Pure Unreal” the Green Bay Packers of songs.

Anyways, please check it out, I think it’s really good. I made the video myself, made the cover art myself, it is my little pocket gesamtkunstwerk.

KEEP POUNDIN’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

The new Hit single (and hit single) “Pure Unreal” comes out this Tuesday, October 14th. Seeing as Hit is the most unsearchable band name in music history, I’ve for the first time made a pre-save link for Spotify users. Head to https://ffm.to/pureunreal and click where it says “Pre-Save” to get “Pure Unreal” straight to your library as soon as it comes out. If you aren’t a Spotify user, just uh, search for it on Deezer or whatever when it comes out.

Otherwise, pre-saving the song supposedly helps it algorithmically somehow, which in this specific instance is of the utmost importance. I bet $69,000 on Kalshi that this song would become an actual chart topper, so if you care about me and don’t want me to wind up in the freakin’ East River with cement shoes, you know what to do…

@one.weird.trick.recsTHE JOURNEY BEHIND THE SONG: PART TWO a documentary miniseries on the making of “PURE UNREAL” by HIT, which comes out OCTOBER 14TH on ONE WEIRD TRICK#newmusic #indiemusic #educational #behindthescenes #musician

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The pre-save thing is not the only way I’m humiliating myself for this release. There is now a 1WT TikTok, where I’ve already posted four installments in an ongoing docuseries called The Journey Behind the Song, a behind the scenes look at how “Pure Unreal” came to be, soup to nuts. You can follow me at @one.weird.trick.recs. All the same vids are also on our Instagram as reels.

That said, having TikTok now I gotta say it is the most diabolical and heinous social media platform I have ever encountered. My algorithm on there is completely untouched — I don’t even know how to search stuff, the interface makes me feel like I’m 80 years old — and this is the kind of messed up stuff I get fed:

No wonder 12-year-olds can’t read and all think Charlie Kirk was awesome, they’re just watching SEAL Team Six gorillas tell them they’re little bitches. We really should’ve banned this thing when we had the chance. But alas, since it exists we should make the most of it and use it as a means to feed my ego. Society is cooked anyway.

KEEP POUNDIN’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Long time no post. While there haven’t been any shows in a while, we have been hard at work on new Hit music. The first fruit of that labor is coming out two weeks from today, Tuesday, October 14th, and it’s a single called “Pure Unreal.” Below is a 1WT exclusive teaser of the music video I made for it:

Gonna just go mask off here— I don’t think you’ll hear a catchier song this year. When people talk about the Perfect Pop Song, they mean this song. It is a tru banger. To quote Babe Ruth after he hit 60 home runs in 1927, “Let’s see some other son of a bitch match that!”

In other news, if ya missed it I got to interview perhaps my all-time favorite singer for Talkhouse recently, Colin Blunstone of the Zombies. We talked about one of my all-time favorite albums, Odessey and Oracle, which was recently reissued. I even got a free copy of it!

That’s all for now. Maybe if I figure out how to make a pre-save page or one of those dumb Linktree things or whatever, I will bug you once again. Until then,

KEEP POUNDIN’,

Craig J. Heed

Sup everybody,

Just shootin’ out a quick reminder that tomorrow night (July 8th) we’re playing at Cassette (68-38 Forest Ave, Ridgewood) on this noisy bill courtesy John V. We’re on first at 8 PM sharp, followed by Hallcat (mem. Godcaster) and watergh0st. $15 cover, a nominal fee for music of this caliber…

Could be the last show for a little bit, so do try to make it out!

Keep Poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Hit is playing Cassette (68-38 Forest Ave, Ridgewood) July 8th, as part of this great Salon Du Health & Efficiency bill with Hallcat and watergh0st. I know I milked the, “this is the first full lineup show in a while, who KNOWS when the next one will be” angle in the newsletter about our last show but, the latter is true of this one too! There’s nothing on the docket past this one, and we’re playing a venue we’ve never played before, which I think is enough to designate this a Destination Show™️. You can get tickets here in advance or at the door day of.

If you come to the show on the 8th, you’ll definitely hear this song we debuted at Bar Freda called “Softlock,” which was captured in its entirety in the clip below. It has some crazy nasty guitar sounds if I do say so myself…

And speaking of crazy nasty sounds, we wrapped up principal drum tracking for Hit Album 2 this weekend. A big part of the whole project has been trying to see how far we can push the effects on the guitars and vocals, but since that alone is enough to piss off any sound guy, the drum setup at our shows has always been pretty straight forward. But fear not, in the studio we’ve been trying to ruin the drums as well. Here’s a clip of the sounds we were getting for a song called “The Big Piece”:

There’s more normal sounds too, here’s a snippet from a song called “Griffey Strum.” Rest of the track is scratch/demo, and this is actually not the take we wound up using, so it’s truly the rare shit you get from subscribing:

These are deep cuts so we probably won’t play ‘em on 7/8, but there’ll be plenty of other massive tunes to listen to and enjoy. Hope to see you there…

Keep Poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Just shootin’ out a quick reminder that Hit is playing a show on Wednesday (June 18th) at Bar Freda (801 Seneca Ave, Ridgewood). As previously noted, we haven’t played a show with the full lineup in nearly three months, and our schedule is currently blank after this one.

We’ve been recording an album’s worth of songs the past couple months at Charles’ studio Tiny Panther, and we’re gonna play a bunch of those songs on Wednesday. I don’t have a ton of video from the sessions because I’m BUSY DOING STUFF at them but here are a couple clips of us getting into some extremely heady, studio-as-instrument type territory:

In addition to the tunes those inscrutable clips are from, we’ll also be playing the song teased in this animation I made below called “Pure Unreal”:

Hope you can make it out! Until then…

Keep Poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Long time no see— the next Hit show is three weeks from today, Wednesday, June 18th at Bar Freda in Ridgewood (801 Seneca Ave). Also on the bill are Zon Zwinger, Jules on Expo and Wes Ambien. 8 PM doors, $12 cover. It’ll be the first full band Hit show since March, and it’s the only show we’ve got on the books, so if you miss this one, you really screwed the pooch…

While this upcoming show promises to be a Canonical Hit affair, there were a couple fun one-offs recently. As you may remember from the last newsletter, I played a solo set at Bar Freda at the end of April. All things considered it went pretty well! Here’s a clip of a song called “Basal” (aka “Ride the Lightning II”), which I’ve posted before in full band form, and which you may even see again if you keep reading…

And here’s the uh, “bridge” of the very same song. One for them, one for me as they say:

And here’s one called “Pure Unreal,” the home demo of which I shared a while back. It’s the poppy outlier of our new material, so maybe look for it as a non-album single sometime in the nearish future:

My favorite of the bunch is probably this one, “Doomsdays.” I forget if there have been any live clips of it in the newsletter before, but there’s definitely been snippets on our Instagram so feel free to go snoopin’ there if you’re interested.

And here are some cool FX I was doin' at the end of it. We’re actually gonna record this one this weekend. Stay tuned…

When I was sound checking before the set, the sound guy rolled his eyes at the very sight of my vocal pedal. But after I played, he came up, demeanor softened, and said, “You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen someone use one of those and it’s seemed necessary.” If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this line a’ biz, it’s that ya can’t ask for much more than the sound guy’s tacit respect.

Then a couple weeks ago Cameron, Charles and I did a trio set at NYU where Charles teaches, as part of the music technology program’s open house. I really loved the band who played before us, they did this great cover of “Numb” by Linkin Park. The John Carpenter-y piano riff on the chorus was a nice touch:

They also did “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen which I unfortunately didn’t record. We burned through four quick songs and called it a night. Here’s a clip of “Basal”:

Apparently during our set a kid in the crowd turned to their friend and said, “Are these guys grad students? They’re actually really good!” If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this line a’ biz, it’s that ya can’t ask for much more than the youth’s tacit respect.

Keep Poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Two weeks from today, April 23rd, I’m playing a solo Hit set at Bar Freda (801 Seneca Ave, Ridgewood), as part of a great bill with Kissy Noises, Kolb and Buried Giant. You can get advance tix here, I think I’m opening.

I’m gonna use all the same crazy vocal and guitar effects as usual. What’ll it sound like? Here’s a voice memo us playing our song “Pure Unreal”:

And here’s a demo of just me playing it:

So just picture that for all our songs. But if that’s too much psychological labor, you might as well just come to the show…

Keep Poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Hit is playing Our Wicked Lady (153 Morgan Ave, Bushwick) this Thursday (3/20). We’re on at 10, and playing with Mevius, Slalomville and Loser Cruiser. We’re gonna play a set of all new songs, you can get tix here or at the door.

One of the new ones we’ll play is this one called “The Latch,” which we played Friday night at Sugar Mouse, replete with troubleshooting visuals:

It was a pretty funny show. At one point we were in the Matrix:

And at another we were in like Roku City:

Eventually the mic stopped working, here’s a snippet of the jam while we tried to fix it:

We wound up playing an instrumental version of a new song, then kinda got the mic working again and did a couple more that I’m guessing were also basically instrumentals before callin’ it a night.

All in all we had fun, and I think the words of the acoustic duo who opened for us ultimately ring true— technical difficulties may come to snuff you, it may even seem like every path leads to nowhere at times, but hey, it ain’t found a way to kill me yet…

Keep Poundin’,

Craig

Hit is playing a super last minute show this Friday (March 14) in the East Village at a place called Sugar Mouse (47 3rd Ave).

This show is shrouded in mystery. I’m not really familiar with the venue, but it looks wild:

I think as of right now there’s also no other band on the bill. If you’d like to play an Immersive Gaming Hall at 7:30 on Friday, lemme know. Otherwise, you should buy tix here to have the likely once-in-a-lifetime experience of playing neon foosball while watching experimental rock music. We are potentially playing for an hour-plus and debuting as many as four new songs, which in and of itself is sure to be an immersive experience…

Keep Poundin’,

Craig

Sup everybody,

Two weeks from today (Thursday, March 20th), Hit is playing Our Wicked Lady again (153 Morgan Ave, Bushwick). Also on the bill are Mevius, Slalomville and Loser Cruiser. You can get tix in advance here.

We’ll be playing all new songs, some we’ve been playing already, but a bunch we haven’t. I honestly don’t even know what the setlist might be yet, though one new one we probably won’t play is this one I made recently called “Homework.” I originally wanted to see if I could make an a cappella song using my vocal FX pedal, then added a little guitar, and here’s the result:

You won’t hear it on the 20th, but you’ll hear some other cool shit. And that’s the Heed Guarantee™️. #GuarantHeed

Keep Poundin’

Craig

Sup everybody,

Just shootin’ out a reminder that on Thursday, Miracle Sweepstakes is playing the Windjammer (552 Grandview Ave, Ridgewood). It will also feature Membra and the debut of Good Realm, which Ian is playing drums in. Show starts at 8:30, and you can get tix here or at the door.

We’re going to debut a couple never-before-heard songs, play a few more new ones I’ve shared in past newsletters, and dust off a very rare oldie. A can’t miss event…

Keep Poundin’

Craig