🎧 Approved: Humdrum

Chicago’s Humdrum, the brainchild of Loren Vanderbilt, feels like a sonic time machine. Drawing inspiration from the shimmering guitar jangle and melancholic tones of IRS-era REM and the post-punk rhythms of New Order, Vanderbilt’s project explores the intersection where indiepop meets shoegaze. 

Humdrum’s latest single, ‘Eternal Blue’, embodies this fusion, melding lush, reverb-soaked guitars with a propulsive bassline that Vanderbilt says was the song’s foundation.

“The bassline really kicked off what would become ‘Eternal Blue’”, Vanderbilt explains. “I liked the groove and found myself locked in, playing it on loop and kinda dancing to myself, trying to figure out where to take it. I was working on it at home and brought it to the practice room one day with a drum machine beat, and the other elements just kinda fell into place from there. The song is about the suffocating isolation of loneliness and believing that you can only be resuscitated by true love”. 

The song’s title, like much of Humdrum’s work, carries a cinematic quality. “The name was nicked from a 90s video game I still haven’t managed to play – ‘Lunar: Eternal Blue’”, Vanderbilt says. “I have no idea what ‘Eternal Blue’ refers to in the game, but for me, it’s the blue of a sky with no horizon, maybe of heaven, and it represents the beautiful parts of the universe we live in”.

With crystalline production and swirling emotional intensity, ‘Eternal Blue’ reflects both on the past and hints at where Humdrum is headed, confidently navigating the space between shoegaze haze and indiepop clarity.

🎧Watch the video for ‘Eternal Blue’ below