The music of Dallas Ugly shines with lustrous nostalgia on their debut album, Watch Me Learn. Built on a foundation of mellow interchanges of electric guitar and pedal steel, the rhythm and flow evoke an old-school country version of lo-fi hip hop radio. Combined with soaring fiddle and heartfelt vocals, it becomes something wholly new – a sound as unique as it is dreamy. Themes of change, loss, and growth, felt alongside the band members’ decade-long friendship, lend themselves naturally to the rolling country music vibes of their melodies and instrumentation. Together, Owen Burton, Eli Broxham, and Libby Weitnauer present a dreamy, last-call rendition of three chords and the truth. If you close your eyes, you can practically feel yourself slow dancing under the lazy orbit of a disco ball at midnight. (Dallas Ugly, 2022)

Dallas Ugly’s unique, quietly intense sound is all at once nostalgic and new, carrying an Americana torch into their own technicolor future. This group of college friends turned dedicated bandmates shared a track from their upcoming full-length debut, Watch Me Learn, out April 8, 2022. You can pre-order the album here.

The song, “Liberated No Ones,” lumbers along, ghostly, with touches of Gillian Welch-esque verses and bursts of spazzy Radiohead-sounding drum beats and violin-turned-arpeggiator fills. Watch the historically inspired video here which features footage of coal miners sourced from documentaries Steel: A Symphony of Industry, “Original Pocahontas” Coal and A Chance To Play.

The whole of Watch Me Learn—produced by Alec Spiegelman (Cuddle Magic, Ana Egge, Taylor Ashton)—explores the missed adventures and misadventures of life in one’s early twenties—mistakes being made, lessons being learned, bonds being formed and broken as one grows into the person they are meant to be. The band explores these themes with fondness and love, a gentle empathy for the inner child they have left behind. More than anything else, they explore them together. “I hope that what people take away from the album is an emotional response—take away the feeling of having just caught up with some old friends in a very intimate experience,” says Weitnauer. After all, that is what the album was to them: a way to reconnect with old friends after time apart—sharing the stories of the hardships and triumphs that led them back to each other. It is an album that in part looks back on the journeys and evolutions we make as individuals, but also looks towards the communities and people who shape our lives in equal measure.

Watch Me Learn track list:
Remember When You’re Leaving
Watch Me Learn
Anyone New
Saint-Louis
Part of a Time
Gold
Money
Liberated No Ones
Fool’s Life
Big Hands
Ought To Miss You By Now
Sleight of Hand