Lowertown announce new album ‘Ugly Duckling Union’ + share ‘I Like You A Lot’ single

There’s something quietly magnetic about Lowertown. Maybe it’s the way their songs feel half-confessional, half-daydream. Maybe it’s how their lo-fi textures carry real emotional weight. Or maybe it’s just that they make music that feels like it understands you.

The New York duo have officially announced their new album ‘Ugly Duckling Union,’ landing May 22 via Summer Shade, and share its lead single, I Like You A Lot. It’s a rare love song from the pair — tender, twitchy, and totally intoxicating.

Over a spry drumbeat and twangy, slightly scrappy guitars, I Like You A Lot captures that dizzy early stage of a crush — the kind where your body reacts before your brain catches up. The band describe it as a song about admiring someone from afar, letting fantasy spiral into obsession, and sitting with the vulnerability of not knowing whether those feelings will ever come back your way. Romantic? Yes. Slightly unhinged? Also yes — in the most relatable way possible.

Early buzz around Lowertown continues to snowball, with praise rolling in from DIY, Stereogum, FLOOD, Notion, The Line of Best Fit, and more — all circling around the same idea: this is a band operating on their own emotional frequency, untethered from genre and expectation.

Behind the scenes, ‘Ugly Duckling Union’ arrives at a pivotal moment. Songwriters Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg spent the past few years navigating nonstop touring, label separation, creative burnout, and the intense, sometimes messy closeness of growing up together in music. Their partnership — artistic and personal — reached a breaking point, forcing them to slow down and reconnect with the reasons they started in the first place.

Those roots stretch back to Atlanta: basements, forests, DIY spaces on the verge of disappearing. But just as importantly, they trace back to the internet — Tumblr pages, Reddit forums, and early online fandoms that once felt communal rather than commercial. During the pandemic, watching those spaces dissolve helped spark the idea behind ‘Ugly Duckling Union’: a response to isolation, a push toward rebuilding community in strange, imaginative ways.

Conceptually inspired by the world-building of Gorillaz and the community-first ethos of Fugazi, the album introduces a surreal narrative centered on Dale, a duckling protagonist, and a collective resisting LBH — a fictional media corporation bent on separation and control. It’s playful, weird, and pointed in all the right ways.

Lowertown aren’t just telling this story through music, either. The ‘Ugly Duckling Union’ universe expands into a playable Minecraft world, comics illustrated by Doctor Nowhere (Silas Orion), plush dolls, a handbook, and constant fan interaction through Discord, YouTube, and Instagram. Their shows have become real-world meetups for people who first connected online — proof that fandom can still turn into genuine community.

To celebrate the album announcement, Lowertown have also revealed an extensive North American headline tour, running from late April through June and wrapping up with a hometown show at Bowery Ballroom. Tickets are on sale now.

At its core, ‘Ugly Duckling Union’ is fully DIY — written, recorded, produced, and mixed entirely by Osby and Weinberg. But despite that insular process, the album’s spirit is outward-looking. It’s about misfits finding each other, about the freedom that comes with being an outsider, and about making something beautiful with the people who truly get you.

As Osby puts it: this is music for the “misfit toys.” And honestly? We wouldn’t want it any other way.

‘Ugly Duckling Union’ is out May 22.
I Like You A Lot is streaming now.