Conflict at Serenity Pools (CASP) is the solo project of LA-based artist Luke McQueeney, blending dream pop, shoegaze, and experimental textures into immersive, emotional landscapes. Drawing from 16mm and MiniDV visuals, analog gear, and layered field recordings, CASP explores themes of memory, liminality, and quiet transformation. They are currently developing a new LP titled Green and Blue.
On their new single, “Summer Ghost,” CASP seamlessly blends lush shoegaze with jangle-pop guitars, crafting an emotional journey through grief and acceptance. The marriage of pop and shoegaze is nothing that hasn’t been explored. Still, CASP captures those tropes and injects personal experience into them, creating the refreshing feeling that washes over the listener when you hit play. The arrangement is a warping example of the band’s range as they seamlessly transition from wind instrument-led melodies to distorted walls of sound. It is easy to get lost in the flowery and ever-evolving instrumental, but CASP is digging deep with their words. Lyrically, “Summer Ghost” paints a vulnerable portrait of the McQueeney as he employs vivid imagery that becomes palpable. With a new album in the works, CASP is heading in a uniquely expressive direction, and “Summer Ghost” is just the start of the unraveling of the band’s mystique.
“When my dad passed in the first hour of summer 2023, I remember feeling something quite spiritual. It was his favorite season, and I share that disposition. There’s something profound about these long days of light, like this is what life is supposed to be. Each time we come back to this season, my senses are often awakened in a very specific way; there’s a feeling of return, of coming back home to myself,” explains McQueeney. “I wanted to try and capture this feeling in a song last summer, but that morphed into our single ‘summer garage,’ which was a bit more playful and less about death, ghosts, and heavier subjects. This year I’m feeling more able to explore that.”
