Now, Now’s surprise EP ’01’ and its haunting opener “Talk to God” mark a bold, breathtakingly intimate and all-consuming rebirth for the beloved indie pop duo – a raw, radiant reckoning with self that finds them “unraveling and undoing,” learning to live, feel, and create on their own terms again.

Stream: “Talk to God” – Now, Now

It’s hard not to love a song that sends shivers down your spine; that hits you like a ton of bricks; that makes you feel alive; that hurts in all the best ways.

Now, Now’s “Talk to God” radiates a slow, simmering, and soul-stirring heat. The first track off the beloved Twin Cities duo’s surprise new EP 01 is dark, intimate, and all-consuming, the kind of song that leaves you breathless in its wake. Heavy drums pulse like a heartbeat, guitars burn slow and steady, and KC Dalager’s voice – husky, raw, and softly smoldering – carries the ache of someone wrestling with themselves in real time. “I notice every time I’m down / I stay down…” she sings, her confession spilling out like a prayer whispered through clenched teeth. “Now I talk to God at the window… I’m always sitting in silence, it’s just a habit.”

I notice every time I’m down
I stay down
Each time it’s coming around
I just stay down
‘Cause I don’t even like myself
How could anyone
After everything I’ve done
How could anyone

And now I talk to god at the window
Yeah, I know I go too fast
Then I move slow
I’m always sitting in silence
It’s just a habit
And now I talk to god at the window

Seductive, soul-baring, and brutally vulnerable, “Talk to God” feels less like a song and more like a reckoning – an emotional exorcism set to sound. It’s a brutally honest self-portrait painted in shadow and static, where pain and beauty coexist, tangled and inseparable. “This one is about a feeling of desperation and loneliness, but accepting and understanding why you feel that way,” Dalager tells Atwood Magazine. “Knowing that if you don’t like or accept yourself, no matter what anyone does, it will never feel as though anyone cares about you enough. Because even that can’t and won’t fill that space where you lacking compassion for yourself has left a hole in your unconscious body mind.”

“There is a feeling of defeat and stuckness, but still longing to feel whole and complete. I do sit in silence most of the time since I rarely listen to music. Especially in the car where I spend a lot of time each day. Or on a walk. ‘God’ can be God or any spiritual entity or any energetic source or force (or the universe as a whole) that you reach out for in moments of desperation. Sonically, we were going for clear and classic and to the point. I had originally written this for KC Rae, but decided to use it for Now, Now instead.”

That self-awareness is what makes “Talk to God” so powerful. Its darkness isn’t aimless; it’s searching, restless, human. “The theme of this song is learning new ways to exist, while simultaneously having to unlearn everything you’ve ever known about yourself,” Dalager says. “There is a desperation and in some ways a sense of defeat with this song.” That push and pull – between despair and acceptance, self-loathing and self-love – forms the beating heart of 01, an EP that finds Now, Now reconnecting with their roots while facing their present selves without flinching.

I always think of the worst thing
That could happen
I never learned to give myself compassion
Now every word is coming back to get me
Echoing across the silence
Talking to myself
Oh heaven help me
Heaven help me

Now I talk to god at the window
Yeah, I know I go too fast
Then I move slow
I’m always sitting in silence
It’s just a habit
And now I talk to god at the window

Recorded back in their basement studio, 01 feels like a homecoming. It’s a return to the band’s core: Acacia “KC” Dalager and Bradley Hale, stripped of label pressures and rediscovering their shared rhythm. “01 is a bridge connecting our past to the present, and with an eye to the future,” Hale says. “It’s another lesson in trusting ourselves.” Throughout, the duo explore themes of undoing and unlearning, peeling back layers of sound and emotion until what remains is raw, radiant truth.

Each of 01’s four tracks offers a different shade of that truth, with “Talk to God” acting as the EP’s confession – opening the record in a hush and a howl, desperation becomes a form of prayer.

It sets the tone for everything that follows, capturing a band stripped to its essence – weathered by time, grounded in honesty, and unafraid to bare every fracture and feeling as they begin their next chapter.

“Isn’t It Funny” follows, with Dalager’s voice front and center, hovering over sparse instrumentation that builds into a jagged electropop fever dream. It’s equal parts haunted and hypnotic, her vocals floating through lyrics that balance heartbreak and self-acceptance in the same breath: Isn’t it funny you’re not crying too. “About You” trades introspection for heat. Built around a deep, pulsing bassline and white-hot, in-the-red vocals, it’s the band’s most charged and theatrical moment. Dalager’s voice drips with frustration and longing as she insists, “I don’t wanna write another song about you,” even as she does exactly that – a contradiction that makes it all the more intoxicating. Finally, “Speck” closes the EP in a cloud of brooding ache. It’s the quiet after the storm – the sound of someone sifting through the emotional wreckage and finding something fragile, maybe even holy, left behind. Pulsing with a heavy electronic heartbeat, it’s the most intimate and exposed Now, Now have sounded in years, a slow fade into self-understanding.

“I think these songs are really a great example of the culmination of everything we’ve learned over the 23 years of making music together,” Hale says. Taken together, the four songs on 01 feel like a rediscovery – a reawakening of the chemistry, vulnerability, and trust that first defined Now, Now. There’s a looseness here, a freedom that comes from making music for no one but themselves. Every track feels alive with that pulse – unguarded, self-assured, and boldly brave.

And yet it’s “Talk to God” that unmistakably sets the tone – and the temperature. It aches inside and out, every note steeped in longing, every silence heavy with reflection.

The drums hit like an echo of the heart, the guitars shimmer like heat on the horizon, and Dalager’s voice becomes the axis around which everything spins. She isn’t just singing about desperation; she’s living through it, metabolizing it, and transforming it into something tender, something transcendent.

“Heaven help me,” she pleads, the line looping until it dissolves into itself. “Talk to God” doesn’t offer answers – it doesn’t need to. It’s enough that it feels true.

In the context of 01, “Talk to God” feels like the beginning of an unraveling – the first unspoken step toward healing, toward seeing yourself clearly again. It’s an act of unlearning, of surrender, of quiet reckoning. And in that stillness, Now, Now find something sacred: A reminder that even in the darkest corners of loneliness, connection – to self, to spirit, to sound – is still possible.

Now every word is coming back to get me
Echoing across the silence
Talking to myself
Oh heaven help me
Heaven help me now

I talk to god at the window
I go too fast then I move slow
I talk to god at the window
Heaven help me…

Atwood Magazine recently caught up with KC Dalager a brief but illuminating look behind the curtain at Now, Now’s next adventure. Dive into our conversation below, and stream 01 out now!

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:: stream/purchase 01 here ::

:: connect with Now, Now here ::

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Stream: ’01’ – Now, Now

A CONVERSATION WITH NOW, NOW

KC Dalager: This song was initially a song for my solo project, but it felt too good to hoard away. And it felt aligned with the theme of this first batch of songs we planned to release. The theme of this song is of learning new ways to exist, while simultaneously having to unlearn everything you’ve ever known about yourself. There is a desperation and in some ways a sense of defeat with this song.

KC Dalager: I am a spiritual being, but I don’t have a set view of what god is for me. Nature and the universe and spirit energy and ancestors. Talking to god is that moment of desperation where you will reach out to anything bigger than yourself to try and get you out of the place you’re in.

KC Dalager: “Talk To God” fits the “un” (prefix) theme we had internally for this EP. Unlearning, unseen, unraveling, undoing.

KC Dalager: I hope listeners will know that this song is there for them during their talk to god moments in life. That life on Earth is challenging, but there is so much more out there that is bigger than us and bigger than humans. For me, just trusting the process of existence and trying to live as honestly and authentically as I can no matter how hard it can be. And to know that I can always take the times in my life that I feel the most pain and turn it into something that can be there for people when they are experiencing those times in their lives.

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:: stream/purchase 01 here ::

:: connect with Now, Now here ::

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Stream: “Talk to God” – Now, Now

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 © Tom Thornton

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