Tarantula Bill began in 2020 as the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Kendon McGehee. After years as a sideman, McGehee used the pandemic’s stillness to build a DIY studio and teach himself to sing and mix. What started as an isolated creative experiment, beginning with the debut album Toola, has since transformed into a formidable force in the indie-psych scene. Tarantula Bill is entering a defining new era. Their upcoming full-length album, produced, mixed, and mastered by Jon Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, MGMT) at Tarbox Road Studios, is complete and primed for release.
Tarantula Bill has returned with a new sense of fearlessness and otherworldly creativity, and they’re ushering in this new chapter with a hypnotic new single. “This Doesn’t Have To Be It” is psych-pop gold, with tinges of drama and intricate synth work that emphasize the nuanced beauty of it all. Tarantula Bill doesn’t want you to just listen to their new single; they want you to be immersed in it, take it with you day-to-day, as each listen unearths a new layer of this performance. The climbing chorus acts as the lead into the cascading verses, like a climb up a ladder that ends in a free-fall into a world of unrecognizable colors. “This Doesn’t Have To Be It” softly pulses beneath the stunning vocals, making the song’s gentle nature all the more palpable. Tarantula Bill inches closer to carving out their own lane in contemporary psychedelia with a new single that doubles as the beginning of something fresh for the band.
