Out this Fall on Julia’s War Recordings
Nashville experimental-pop duo Total Wife—aka Luna Kupper and Ash Richter—are back with a brand new full-length album. ‘Come Back Down’ arrives September 19, 2025 via the ever-cool Julia’s War Recordings (home to sonic shapeshifters and boundary pushers alike).
Leading the charge is the lush and fuzz-laced single Second Spring, now out and streaming everywhere. The track pairs thick, dreamy guitars with lyrics full of quiet hope, embracing the idea that change can be soft and steady. It’s got that slightly-smeared, end-of-winter shimmer—and it’s a fitting first taste of what’s to come.
“Hard to remember, but flowers will bloom with or without you,” the band says, referencing the same poem that inspired their earlier track Reveal Sky. The lyrics stretch back to 2020, when Ash first scribbled them down in the haze of early pandemic spring. Years later, Luna’s composition helped bring them into focus.
Total Wife has long been a staple of the East Coast DIY circuit, and ‘Come Back Down’ follows 2023’s ‘in/out’ with even more sonic experimentation and emotional excavation. If you caught their ‘0 EP’ from late last year, you’ve already had a sneak peek—tracks like “naoisa” and “(dead b)” return in new, transformed forms.
The album was made in a kind of half-dream state. Kupper, who handles most of the production, would slip into near-sleep during mixing sessions, only to wake up with new sonic ideas pulled straight from the haze. Think ambient pop via subconscious freefall.
“I’m a psychological mixer,” she explains. “I care more about how someone experiences the sound than how it looks on a frequency analyzer.”
That dream-logic spills over into the music itself. ‘Come Back Down’ is deeply recursive—songs sampling older tracks, repurposing elements, spinning them into new forms. One guitar becomes a synth on another track. A single cover of Elliott Smith’s Between the Bars became the source material for vocal textures across the whole album. The result feels like a sonic Möbius strip—endlessly folding back on itself.
Ash Richter’s lyrics are the most direct they’ve ever been, pulling from pandemic isolation, childhood memories, and internal spirals. On the shoegazey standout peaches, a cancelled recording session turns into a metaphor for distance, longing, and quiet connection. Elsewhere, still asleep captures the high of tour life morphing into something a little more tangled:
“Thank the full moon, my heart is overflowing,” Richter sings. Then: “Is there such a thing as too happy?”
If ‘Come Back Down’ feels deeply personal, that’s because it is. The band made it entirely themselves—no outside producers, no flashy studios. Just a couple of longtime friends and artists building a sonic world from scratch. Visuals, videos, tapes—it’s in Total Wife, top to bottom. Their Nashville basement venue (affectionately dubbed “Ryman 2”) continues to serve as their creative headquarters.
Catch them live this summer and fall—they’ll be hitting the road soon with full tour dates to follow. For now, they’ll support LA’s Dummy at The Blue Room in Nashville on October 2.
Upcoming Shows
JULY
26 – The Duchess – Nashville, TN
OCTOBER
2 – The Blue Room – Nashville, TN (w/ Dummy)
‘Come Back Down’ track list
- in my head
- peaches
- internetsupermagazine
- naoisa
- second spring
- still asleep
- chloe
- (dead b)
- ofersi3
- make it last
Out September 19 via Julia’s War Recordings.
PREORDER ‘COME BACK DOWN’
About Total Wife
Formed in 2016 and relocated to Nashville in 2020, Total Wife are multidisciplinary artists making dream-soaked, genre-free music with a DIY heartbeat. Their world is full of intimate visuals, looping sounds, and a community-first spirit that pulses through everything they do.
About Julia’s War Recordings
Founded by Douglas Dulgarian of They Are Gutting A Body of Water, Julia’s War is a Philadelphia-based label offering physical media for bands that push sonic boundaries with intention and heart.
Follow Total Wife
Bandcamp | Spolicy | YouTube | Instagram
Listen to Second Spring now and get ready to ‘Come Back Down’.
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