PETEY - The Yips

Is anyone waiting for the sun

To open up and meet someone?

I wonder who it is

("Ask Someone Else")

Having built up a cult following on TikTok that's crept close to a million followers, Peter Martin – aka Petey USA – arrives at his fourth LP with numbers that are anything but marginal by now: half a million monthly listeners on Spotify and a previous album released through Capitol. The new "The Yips" offers a pretty clear snapshot of where he currently stands, somewhere between the indie circuit and mainstream visibility: there's the potential to reach a wide audience without the record ever feeling calculated, and there's a direct, instinctive, often lopsided pop-rock language – a recognizable identity able to hold together immediacy and emotional friction.

American backwater between Springsteen and lo-fi: emo and synths turning everyday defeats into generational anthems

The underlying reference point is small-town America, and that idea of heartland rock which – thanks obviously to Bruce Springsteen – has become fixed in the collective imagination as its most recognizable expression. But on "The Yips" what pulses through is a decidedly contemporary America, shot through with synths, drum machines and a nervous, domestic, unpolished power-pop style of writing. Dig deep enough and the framework is the folk-rock songwriting descended from Bob Dylan, but bent toward an emo/alternative attitude that shifts the focus from social epic to a more psychological dimension: ordinary lives and ordinary misfortunes, small everyday defeats, stubborn desires that, rather than imploding, vent themselves in raucous choruses meant to be shouted more than sung. There's an emotional closeness, paradoxical in some ways, to our own Giancane: compared to the musical face of Zerocalcare's TV series, Petey and "The Yips" sound less sharp-edged, less punk, but similar in the way they turn inadequacy into a shared, collective moment, without mythologizing or self-pity.

The visual imagery also plays into this positioning. The cover clearly recalls "The Scholars" by Car Seat Headrest: the subject is different, but the palette and arrangement of shapes turn out to be strikingly similar. So much so that, shrunk down to icon size as happens on streaming interfaces, the two images become almost indistinguishable. It's a nod that works more as a generational signal than an explicit citation, placing Petey within a specific idea of recent American indie: emotional, authentic, untamed, yet able to remain broadly accessible and crossover-friendly.

A scrappy catharsis moving between restrained ballads and moments of rough theatricality

But it's when you dig into the songs that "The Yips" truly reveals its balance between drive and fragility. "Ask Someone Else" builds an epic, melancholic surge around a sequenced synth motif that faintly echoes "Baba O'Riley", letting its slightly ramshackle grandeur collide with an openly emo catharsis that erupts in the chorus: "I don't need intellect, I feel it in my heart/ I think this neighborhood is tearing me apart". While "As Two People Drift Apart" is built on big-music-style drumming, "I'll Believe You" opts for a short, restrained ballad form: no real chorus, a deliberately monotonous verse, and a gradual layering that steadily ratchets up the emotional weight.

Theatricality and clumsy spleen go hand in hand on the album's most tense tracks. "The Milkman" is one of the most exposed moments: the verse marches forward with the hammering step of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire", before opening into a thunderously Springsteen-esque chorus. Linking it all together is the line "This is what it feels like to not feel anything" - a slap that anticipates and triggers the sonic explosion. More ambiguous and shifting, "Spirit Animal" is lit up by a pseudo-riff of floating effects that could come straight out of a Brian Eno rock production, gradually pushing toward an ever rougher, angrier intensity. "God Is In The Gray", finally, with its dirty, enveloping guitars, recalls the Replacements in the way it turns disheveled fragility into anthem material.

Overall, "The Yips" wins you over mainly through personality and grit: the songwriting isn't always as sharp, and when the emotional drive eases off, a few cracks show, both in the melodies and in the way the songs develop. But it's precisely this stubborn, occasionally messy drive that holds the album together and makes it convincing even when the knockout blow is missing.

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01/01/2026