The House Flies anchor “Derelict Crawl” in a bleak Midwestern isolation, turning a persistent post-punk rhythm into a vehicle for physical and emotional decay. Built on dense, heavy guitars and quieter drop-downs, the track sets a scene of domestic erosion where boiling leather and tea mix with farmer’s mist. Alex Riggen, Burnie Eckhardt, Ozzie Woods, and Nick Pompou use this thick sonic backdrop to ground a plainspoken refusal to fit in, using concrete images of shrinking leather and stained bone to measure the distance between bodies.
It develops through the hypnotic repetition of the refrain, “We don’t belong,” which shifts from an observation into a relentless chant. The four-piece locks into a static, driving groove that mirrors the dead-end feeling of an unanswered phone line. The vocal delivery stays flat against the swelling noise, slipping through cracks in limbs while dialtones replace actual contact.
The song´s mid-pulse leaves the rhythmic chant suspended against a sudden drop into silence. No long fade-out, no final guitar flourish, just the blunt interruption of a line that running out of air.
For those who might not know you yet, how would you introduce yourself?
We’re The House Flies, a four-piece from Moline, Illinois. We make dark alternative and post-punk music with elements of goth, shoegaze, and heavier guitar music. We started with the Glimmer EP, followed it with our first full-length Mannequin Deposit, and our second album, Lions and Ore, comes out November 6.
If you had to bottle up your sound into just three words, which ones would you choose?
Dark, textured, physical.
Which artists, not only music-related, or moments have left the biggest mark on your music?
All four of us listen to a pretty wide range of music from different genres and eras, so it’s difficult to reduce the band to a short list of influences. There are definitely elements of post-punk, goth, shoegaze, and heavier guitar music in what we do, but that’s only part of it. We all bring different things into the band.
Outside of music, other forms of art and just life in general inevitably find their way into the songs and lyrics, sometimes without us realizing it at the time. We don’t usually start with a particular aesthetic or set of references and try to make the music fit them. A lot of those connections become clearer afterward.
When you hit play on your songs, what kind of feeling takes over?
Hopefully there’s some unease, but also something familiar in it. We like repetition and quieter spaces that let you settle into a song before something heavier arrives. There’s usually tension in the music, but we don’t want every moment telling you exactly how to feel.
If you could team up with anyone in the world, no limits, who would be that dream collaborator?
We’re probably more interested in finding other artists who are at a similar point to us and have their own distinct sound, atmosphere, or way of looking at things. It would be interesting to collaborate with people where both sides could bring something unexpected to it, share audiences, and build ideas together rather than trying to chase one particular big-name collaboration.
What are you working on now, and what are your plans for the future? Anything exciting you can tell us about?
Right now everything is centered around our second album, Lions and Ore. “Derelict Crawl” comes out September 4, followed by “Lost Literature” on October 2, and the full seven-song album arrives November 6. We’re also doing a limited run of 100 black vinyl copies and playing an album release show that night at Raccoon Motel in Davenport.
After that, we want to keep playing selective shows around the Midwest and give the record some room to live for a while rather than treating the release date as the end of it. We already have some shows taking shape into early 2027, and we’d like to keep expanding outward when the right bills come along.
Can you walk us through the story or emotion behind “Derelict Crawl”? If you can, tell us about the storytelling of the video and the musical approach to it.
I’d rather leave the meaning of “Derelict Crawl” fairly open. The lyrics work more through images and repetition than a clear narrative, and I like that different people can come away from them with different ideas about what is happening. The repeated “We don’t belong” probably gives you as much of a center to the song as we want to give away.
The video follows the same idea. It isn’t really there to explain the song or turn the lyrics into a literal story. We wanted it to create its own strange little environment and leave enough unexplained that people can decide for themselves what they’re watching.
Musically, repetition was important. The song keeps circling back on itself while the guitars and dynamics gradually give it more weight. It’s one of the more direct songs on Lions and Ore, which made it feel like a good first glimpse of the record without revealing too much of where the rest of it goes.
