Fresh from their appearance at SXSW London, Derry “radical alt-pop” duo BEAUTY SLEEP will release dynamic double A single ‘BIG + BAD’ and ‘Unfamilar’, taken from their upcoming highly-anticipated second album, The Whole Damn Cake.
For those yet to be introduced to Beauty Sleep’s particular larger-than-life brand, the Derry duo, comprising producer/songwriters Cheylene Murphy and Ryan McGroarty, serve up a maximalist blend of bewitching synth-pop and guitar-driven indie rock that’s sure to set your heart racing. Their lavish soundscapes and dizzying songwriting have drawn comparisons to New Order, St Vincent and Japanese Breakfast, so far achieving over a million streams and performing at festivals including SXSW, Electric Picnic and Other Voices.
A celebratory, larger-than-life explosion of queer joy and the value of community, ‘BIG + BAD’ takes its title from The Four Tops—“Are you man enough, big and bad enough? Are you gonna let ’em shoot you down?”.
Commenting on the track, McGroarty says: “The concept came from navigating the online swamp, incensed by the algorithm that sees you as little less than a statistic. Endless gendered online ads and podcasts pedalling harmful toxicity and irresponsible narratives. People are beautiful because of our nuances and individuality, influencers widely broadcasting toxic masculinity should not be normalised.”
“For queer people, community, feeling seen and support are everything to us. To be really ‘BIG + BAD’ is to act in defiance, to act responsibly in opposition to those harmful ideas. It is a celebration of identity honouring the wonderful people and forces for good.”
The track comes with an official video shot in a vintage, artsy, boutique B&B called Harrison Chambers of Distinction where the band embodied BIG + BAD energy in various lavish settings. “Melanie, the owner, was very kind to let us run around her gorgeous location all day in various states of dress,” says McGroarty of the shoot. “We just wanted to show off feeling confident and expressing ourselves loudly, because that is the energy and emotion we want the song to evoke in listeners.”
By contrast, AA side ‘Unfamiliar’ is a previously unreleased new cut from the album about restlessness. “It’s a feeling that plagues me,” says Murphy of the track. “It’s the most honest I’ve ever been about that, to myself even, so it feels special. This song is the oldest on the album. It nearly made it onto the first album, but we recorded this overproduced version that lost the magic of the song, so we cut it from the tracklisting.”
“We’ve still always played it when we see a piano and we play it live often, and it’s been a fan favourite for years, so we gave it another go for this album, keeping the production minimal, with hard autotune and vocoders, and we love how it turned out. It feels like it was always meant to sound like this. A sad robot who doesn’t understand their emotions—a perfect encapsulation of how I feel when I’m so restless I can’t breathe.”
ALBUM TRACKLIST
01· Up For Air
02· You (You’re All I Wanted)
03· We Don’t Talk About It
04· BIG + BAD
05· Radical Happiness
06· Unfamiliar
07· No Fever Ever Lasts
08· Send It Out To Sea
09· Keep Your Eyes Up
10· Stars
11· Am I Real? DANCE
12· Big Sky
13· Take A Look Back
ALBUM – The Whole Damn Cake out 17th October 2025