HARMLESS Shares New Single + Video “Aisle Five”; Album Out 3/29

Today, Harmless, the indie-rock meets bedroom-pop project of Los Angeles-based, Mexico-born Nacho Cano, returns with the driving, anthemic new single “Aisle Five,” the latest tease of his forthcoming record, Springs Eternal, out March 29th on Nettwerk. 

On “Aisle Five,” driving percussion and an infectious hook draws you in as Harmless recounts past flings. The accompanying video, a product of Nacho’s creative whimsy— seamlessly merges his love for Fortnite, internet culture, and meme aesthetics. Watch Here. 

On the video, Nacho shares, “‘Springs Eternal’ is an album inspired by suffering a great trauma and the subsequent separation it creates with oneself and the environment around them. With that being said, ‘Aisle Five’ is a video that aims to reconnect with a more humorous part of my youth, my obsession with Internet meme culture and high-effort shitposts. Made using clips of myself playing Fortnite and a couple of FIVERR messages, this video emulates the bygone era of MLG internet culture. My younger self would have thought of it as an ‘ironic’ and funny thing to do with a music label. It connects with who I was.”

WATCH “AISLE FIVE” HERE

Springs Eternal’s 11 tracks chronicle Nacho’s journey to reconnect with himself after the near-death experience of being run over by a drunk driver. Co-produced with Yves Rothman (Blondshell, Amaarae), the album tackles the inner workings of Nacho’s mind — from grappling with the effects of the hit & run, to his experiences as an immigrant and how that has translated to his experience as a creative, to the relationships he’s grown and lost, and more. “To me, the biggest thing that comes out of this music is pain, but I don’t want to be that anymore,” he shares. “Harmless is contradiction and confusion, but we all go through those things. Maybe somebody else can listen to this and feel better, and in turn, it might make me feel better too.”

The album will feature recent singles “Maybe Next Week,” “Hate Me,” “It’s Only You,” “Rosie,” “What U Want,” and “As I Lay Chillin” and fans will be able to catch Harmless live this Spring at his debut headline show at Los Angeles’s El Cid on April 4th, to celebrate the album’s release.

10 years ago the indie luminary released his mixtape I’m Sure- you may be familiar with the single “Swing Lynn” off the album, which exploded online over the last couple of years and is now gold-certified and has nearly half a billion streams (and counting). It’s been 8 years since Harmless’s last full-length, Harmless Fantasies, because 6 years ago his life changed. Nacho was run over by a drunk driver while riding his bike to work, which led to countless surgeries and years in rehab to relearn how to walk. Slowly, he’s been able to return to music and he’s now penned Springs Eternal, an unbelievable album that chronicles his life over the past few years and confronts the challenges of his ongoing journey. 

We collect scars, scratches, and memories as totems of our respective journeys. For Harmless, songs affirm his survival and just how far he has come. On a turbulent rollercoaster of life, he went from a lonely childhood as a Mexican immigrant in Southern California to struggling to be heard as an artist and enduring a near-death crime to eventually achieving gold-certification, playing sold-out shows, and getting married. 

Nacho grew up in Toluca, Mexico, near Mexico City, before his family settled in San Diego. At 17-years-old, he developed an obsession with the “blog-o-sphere,” intently following the commentary of Pitchfork, Anthony Fantano, and more as a self-professed “early high school internet kid.” This obsession made him realize it was possible to make music of his own. Not long after gaining citizenship and starting to gain traction on his music, the hit-and-run crime happened. In between the jarring experience of the criminal trial for his accident, “Swing Lynn” picked up a Gold certification. He maintained this momentum with several EPs, including the Mr. Baby EP [2022], highlighted by “Nacho’s,” “Mrs. Moody,” and “Call Katie.” Simultaneously, he toured with Vacations, Wavves, Roar, and many more. 

Springs Eternal sees Cano revisiting his musical roots, embracing the simplicity and authenticity of his early work. Through self-imposed limitations and intense creative focus, Cano crafted an album that serves as both a homage to his past and a beacon of hope for the future.

“Springs Eternal is a record about trying to connect with my younger self after feeling split due to a gruesome crime. Since the incident, I’ve struggled to reconnect with myself and who I was before it. The trauma of my near-death experience made me feel distant from my identity, and contending with new disabilities and limitations made it all the more difficult to connect with my past. I spent the last year making a record in the style of who I was prior to the trauma that changed my life. 

To achieve the style and sound of my past work, I set limitations during the writing process to ensure authenticity by using only the instruments, effects, and software I had access to in my early career. I wrote every song in my small office-turned-home studio, and restricted myself to about a week’s worth of writing per song, abandoning ideas that took longer, much as I did in my early 20s. I mixed and produced the album with Yves Rothman at Sunset Sound in 9 days. I pushed myself as I would have, and paid for it physically, sometimes to the point of tears, but we did it, and I could not be more proud of the result.

I strived to make these new songs a discussion with my past, the topics being things I’d love to tell my past self about –  like my marriage, my relationship with my father, or my feelings about the music industry as a whole. I wanted to feel like I could use music to reach past a barrier formed by trauma and connect with everything I used to be. Throughout this process, I’ve tried to be optimistic about that feeling and the connection I’ve made. As the saying goes, “Hope springs eternal.”