We’re about to make a couple of exceptions to our usual rules around here. As the site’s title proclaims, we usually steer clear of vocals that aren’t ugly and abrasive. And it’s a rarity when we pay attention to stoner and psychedelic rock. But it’s 4/20 today, and besides that, this song by Let It Breathe that we’re about to premiere through a video is so… damned… good!

These three dudes — guitarist/vocalist Randy, bassist Rob, and drummer Jason — make their home in Mankato, Minnesota, a town located along a large bend of the Minnesota River at its confluence with the Blue Earth River. Through those waters swim massed schools of bullhead catfish. Some people fish for them, some use them for bait. They’re an ancient oddity, spiny and be-whiskered, with a taste for dead and rotting sustenance, nearly blind but with a keen sense of smell and taste buds packed throughout the skin of its body. They live in the darkness; they’ll probably outlive our own species.

So yeah, they’re weird creatures, but they’re also very much a part of the culture where Let It Breathe make their home, and maybe both aspects played a role in the band’s choice of the bullhead for the cover of their self-titled debut album and for the name of the song we’re premiering: “Bucket of Bullheads“. Continue reading »