Today, art-grunge four-piece Tough Cookie usher in a new era with the blistering new single ‘Mercy!’, a potent blend of aching vulnerability and alt-rock catharsis. Building relentlessly to breaking point, frontperson August’s desperate plea cuts through strangled guitars and driving drums with unflinching intensity. They say, “It’s about dealing with the initial blow of a life-changing experience, and meeting someone in the wreckage before you’ve managed to make sense of things.” The single’s artwork, painted by August, depicts a ceiling fan to reflect the kind of desolation so paralysing that all you can do is stare at the ceiling.
Following a breakout 2025, Tough Cookie have spent this year road-testing their new material to a rapidly growing fanbase. Comprising August (vocals and lyrics), Jess (guitar), Gavin (drums) and Dan (bass), Tough Cookie’s acclaimed debut mixtape The Countryside Is Good For You earned support from BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio 1, DIY, Wonderland, Rolling Stone UK and more, while their incendiary live shows at venues including The Elephant’s Head, MOTH Club and The Sebright Arms have given rise to a devoted cult following.
That mixtape resembled a sonic scrapbook, collaging sounds and sprawling memories from six years of playing together. Now, the band return sharper, heavier and more self-assured than ever, after approaching this next chapter with complete creative conviction; “We literally sat down and wrote a Tough Cookie manifesto,” Jess recalls of the document that distilled the band’s visual and sonic influences, creative principles and long-term vision into a shared blueprint.
‘Mercy!’ is the first glimpse of that vision. Fully recorded and produced by August in the band’s “haunted” rehearsal space in the basement of a church, the single embodies the band’s fiercely DIY approach. A musician and a painter, August’s accompanying artwork offers another window into the emotional landscape of the songs. These intentional, deeply personal details define Tough Cookie’s world, blurring the line between art and music in the tradition of bands like Sonic Youth, where every visual and sonic decision speaks the same artistic language.