Connecticut’s Litvar channel grief, panic, and the search for guidance into “Yeah I Know,” a bright, bruising indie rock catharsis from their upcoming third album ‘Being Here’ that makes overwhelming loss feel physical, communal, and fiercely alive.

Stream: “Yeah I Know” – Litvar

Grief can make truth feel almost useless: You understand exactly what has changed, yet every nerve in your body keeps reaching for a way out.

On their emotionally charged new single “Yeah I Know,” Litvar throw that sobering awareness into bright, bruising indie rock, letting jangling guitars, spirited drums, and aching, expressive vocals carry the full-body churn of panic, denial, anger, and need. The result is a vivid, visceral anthem for the moment loss stops being abstract and arrives like a wave – brutal, buoyant, and alive with the sound of trying to stay upright.

Wandering in hell
Like burning memories
Stare into the mirror
Till I’m free

Destined to connect
To darkness and light
As you fall into the sky
You’re always lying

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Yeah I Know,” the cathartic new single from Willimantic, Connecticut’s Litvar. Made up of Rex Thurstan on vocals and lead guitar, Joe Lemieux on drums, Violet Falkowski on vocals and bass, and John Blues McCarthy on vocals and guitar, Litvar have been actively releasing music since 2020, when their early single “Hi I’m Andy” found its audience in the strange, suspended days of the pandemic. In the years since, the band have grown from a scrappy DIY force into a dynamic live act with international miles behind them and two full-length albums – The Greatest Movie of All Time (2020) and Eloquently Aimless (2023) – already to their name.

Their third album, Being Here, arrives July 31 via Mother West, and with it comes a rawer, more intimate vision of Litvar: A band still chasing big emotional release, but now doing so with the closeness of friends recording at home, letting grief, restoration, and hard-won presence reshape their sound from the inside out.

For Rex Thurstan, “Yeah I Know” comes from the disorienting aftermath of losing his father – a period where certainty didn’t bring peace, and every attempt to move forward seemed to collide with another surge of fear.

“‘Yeah I Know’ is about desperately searching for guidance after losing a loved one,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “The song is inspired by how lost I felt after losing my father just before turning 21. The lyrics dissect the daily battles of second guessing yourself, tackling life obstacles on your own, and how panic manifests and slowly recedes. In the album it plays as a psychic watershed moment. Some breakdowns feel like you’ve passed the point of no return.”

“It is a very dramatic song, which it feels aware of, given the know-it-all nature of simply scoffing that I know over and over. In true fashion of a real panic attack, the song doesn’t end abruptly either. It gets louder, there are more voices, and then finally it slowly fades away.”

That last image is key: The song doesn’t simply confess distress; it recreates its shape. “Yeah I Know” builds as if the body itself is sounding the alarm, piling voice upon voice until the refrain becomes both admission and resistance – the sound of someone recognizing the truth, resenting it, and still being pulled under by its force.

The opening moments land with the immediacy of a memory already on fire.

Overdriven guitars glimmer and scrape against a racing pulse; the drums press forward with urgent intent and momentum; Thurstan’s voice rises at the center with a frayed candor that makes every line feel lived in the instant it leaves his mouth. “Wandering in hell like burning memories,” he sings, placing us inside a mind caught between torment and recognition, where reflection offers no clean exit and faith itself feels out of reach.

This spiritual rupture sits at the center of “Yeah I Know.” The repeated plea – “You’ve been praying to god / For something you want / But you just don’t believe / It makes you feel crazy” – carries the exhaustion of someone searching for a sign while already doubting one will appear. When Thurstan sings, “Even god won’t guide you now,” the line doesn’t feel like blasphemy so much as abandonment: A devastating articulation of what it means to lose not only a person, but the map you thought might help you survive their absence.

You’ve been praying to god
For something you want
But you just don’t believe
It makes you feel crazy

Even god won’t guide you now
For you’ve fallen way too far
And twisted way too much
No way to unwind

Yeah, I know
Yeah, I know

“Much of this music was influenced by processing the loss of my father,” Thurstan tells Atwood Magazine. “Returning to the writing process was frustrating; I felt uncomfortable at first with spilling my soul on the page. ‘Yeah I Know’ captures the frustration and the denial of what I had to navigate. There is some desperation in the music and lyrics, because I was feeling that way and looking for some kind of guide or direction. The realization of knowing I’d never see him again came over like huge waves of crushing certainty. ‘Yeah I Know’ expresses the raw anger that it came from.”

Litvar meet that anger with motion. Rather than sink into solemnity, the band push the track into a kinetic alternative rock rush, giving Thurstan’s spiral the lift and propulsion of a chorus built to be shouted back from a crowded room. That tension is what makes “Yeah I Know” cut so deep: It understands that devastation isn’t always still. Sometimes it runs hot, moves fast, and crashes through the chest with the force of a song you can barely stand to sing and can’t help but need.

For drummer Joe Lemieux, the track quickly became a defining piece of the album’s architecture. “‘Yeah I Know’ was one of the earliest songs Rex brought to me for the album, and it really caught my attention,” he shares. “It became the big moment that we built the record around thematically.” In that sense, “Yeah I Know” doesn’t just occupy a dramatic peak on Being Here; it gives the album a point of rupture, the place where everything buried starts demanding to be heard.

Bored by grief and life
I lose the will to fight
I beg for mercy now
Set me free

The rain falls on my face
As I start erase
From atmospheres and life
You wave goodbye

That point of rupture speaks to the wider emotional landscape of Being Here, an album Litvar describe as their most intimate and unguarded work to date.

“Being Here is anthemic at times, which is something that we always love to do in every project,” Thurstan explains. “We love big rock moments juxtaposed with sections in a song that are quiet and more introspective. It feels right that these dynamics still exist in Being Here. It also makes sense that there are fewer grandiose moments, because this project is more intimate overall. I wanted to feel like I was in the room with the listener, just playing guitar.”

“Litvar’s always been about playing with dynamics, and this album is us pushing that as far as we’ve ever gone,” Lemieux adds. “The high-energy moments are used sparingly, the lows are drawn out to build more suspense. It was a lot of fun to build these moments, especially on the drums in the recording process.”

This push and pull is exactly what makes “Yeah I Know” so gripping. Litvar lean into contrast without letting the seams show: The guitars shine with a restless, jangly urgency; the rhythm section keeps the song charging ahead; Thurstan’s vocals cut through the rush with a rawness that feels almost too exposed to look away from. The track has the lift of a 2000s alternative pop-rock anthem and the emotional weight of a private breaking point, making room for melody, volatility, confession, and release in the same breath.

You’ve been praying to god
For something you want
But you just don’t believe
It makes you feel crazy

Even god won’t guide you now
For you’ve fallen way too far
And twisted way too much
No way to unwind

Yeah, I know
Yeah, I know

Its refrain lands with devastating simplicity. “Yeah, I know” can read as resignation, defiance, exhaustion, or self-protection depending on the second it hits – a phrase tossed back at the world by someone who has already heard the answer and still cannot make peace with it. He knows what has changed. He knows there’s no easy solution waiting around the corner. He knows grief cannot be reasoned with just because the truth has already arrived. Litvar build the song around that cruel awareness, turning a phrase of recognition into a charged release valve for everything the body still can’t accept.

By the time the song begins stacking voices and widening its emotional field, “Yeah I Know” becomes less a portrait of panic than a physical experience of it. The music swells, the refrain keeps circling back, and the track refuses to land all at once. Instead, it lets the feeling crest and recede in real time, honoring the way panic can arrive like a storm and leave the body ringing long after the worst of it has passed.

For Thurstan, that honesty is the heart of both the song and the album it helps define.

“I definitely hope to get the idea across to listeners that there is everything right and healthy about being completely real about how you feel,” he says. “I’ve often felt understood by someone else’s music that is vulnerable in a way I’m not sure anything else could achieve. I hope to make that feeling happen for others. To feel more normal about being in a dark place emotionally, and believing that they can get to the other side as well.”

Lemieux hears that same connection in the band’s bond. “I hope that listeners take away the friendship and care that was put into every song,” he says. “We love making music, it’s one of the only things we really know how to do, and I think this album is us at our best.”

That care is all over “Yeah I Know.” For all its anguish, the song never feels alone. It’s held by four musicians throwing themselves into the same surge, making room for one another inside the chaos, and trusting that candor can become communion when it’s played loud enough. Litvar don’t offer an easy exit from the wave; they meet it head-on, guitars blazing and voices rising, until the act of staying upright starts to sound like its own kind of grace.

Stream “Yeah I Know” and its music video exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and read our full conversation with Litvar below as they open up about grief, friendship, the making of Being Here, and the raw, restorative power of telling the truth in song. “Yeah I Know” may not explain grief away, but it gives those overwhelming feelings a shape, a sound, and a living, lasting pulse.

You just don’t believe and it makes you crazy
(God won’t guide you now)
You just don’t believe and it makes you crazy
(For you’ve fallen way too far)
You’ve been praying to god (Yeah)
For something you want (I know)
But you just don’t believe (Yeah)
It makes you feel crazy (I know)

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:: stream/purchase Yeah I Know here ::

:: connect with Litvar here ::

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Stream: “Yeah I Know” – Litvar

A CONVERSATION WITH LITVAR

Rex: More than anything, we are die-hard fans of music. I try to put everything I feel and think into what I write, and I’m always thinking about the next project. Our sound shifts based on what we think will effectively complement the lyrics. Currently, our music is in the most raw state that it has probably ever been.

Joe: It’s really our friendship that drives this whole thing, and I think it really shows in the new album. We’ve been doing this for six years now, and I think we’re really hitting our stride on our sound and our songwriting.

Rex: Recently I’ve been re-connecting with our first album, The Greatest Movie of All Time. One of the first songs I started to lean into vulnerability with the lyrics is “Sertraline.” That song is about acknowledging hard feelings and looking for some kind of magic spell to make you feel better. Sometimes I cringe at my old work, I’m sure I’m not alone with that. However, this song still feels fresh to me, and Joe’s drums and production really shine on that song.

Joe: I’ve also been into The Greatest Movie of All Time recently. There’s one song, “Healer,” that was actually the first song Rex and I wrote together for the band, and it’s probably my favorite off that album. There’s a part of “Healer” where we sampled audio of Rex and I talking to each other, and it’s crazy to hear our voices from back then; it just feels like it was so long ago. We still play “Healer” live and it’s one of my favorite parts of the set. Another track I love is “I Think We’re Lost,” a standalone single we released in 2024. It was one of my favorite recording sessions we’ve had, I really got to play around with blending electronic drums with my acoustic kit we were recording.

Rex: There are many key influences, but Joe and I share some favorites. To pick a couple, Porter Robinson is a big one, after re-defining his career with Nurture (2021), we were so moved by the landscapes and rhythms of it. Additionally, we’re massive James Ivy fans, a current New York-based artist who has an incredibly unique alternative rock sound. He is one of a kind and constantly on replay for me. Our current sound definitely has some influence from these artists, but what we’re excited about most of all is the feeling that we’ve found our voice as a band. My personal writing process has gone through many phases. In retrospect, some of them were clouded by too much focus on trying to make something that I thought would be successful. I threw all of that away on this new project and instead focused on being candid about how I was feeling. We focused on making the music we wanted to hear and nothing else.

Joe: Rex and I definitely share some faves; we practically started the band because of a mutual love for Snow Patrol. Pinegrove, Phoebe Bridgers, and The 1975 are a few more big influences. I’m really excited about how our music is sounding these days, I think we’re using dynamics to our best ability yet, and it shows on Being Here and in our live performances.

Rex: Being Here is anthemic at times, which is something that we always love to do in every project. We love big rock moments juxtaposed with sections in a song that are quiet and more introspective. It feels right that these dynamics still exist in Being Here. It also makes sense that there are fewer grandiose moments, because this project is more intimate overall. I wanted to feel like I was in the room with the listener, just playing guitar.

Joe: Litvar’s always been about playing with dynamics, and this album is us pushing that as far as we’ve ever gone. The high-energy moments are used sparingly, the lows are drawn out to build more suspense. It was a lot of fun to build these moments, especially on the drums in the recording process.

Rex: “What Kind of Man,” is a good representation of the up-close and intimate sound that Being Here centers around. It also felt right to start with a song that lyrically throws you in the deep end of how vulnerable we can be, telling stories of some of the most difficult obstacles I’ve navigated in the past few years after losing my dad.

Joe: On our last album, Eloquently Aimless, each song had a different feel, but Being Here is a lot more consistent sound-wise. “What Kind of Man” throws you right into the middle of that, giving the listener an insight to our new sound for this album.

Rex: Much of this music was influenced by processing the loss of my father. Returning to the writing process was frustrating; I felt uncomfortable at first with spilling my soul on the page. “Yeah I Know” captures the frustration and the denial of what I had to navigate. There is some desperation in the music and lyrics, because I was feeling that way and looking for some kind of guide or direction. The realization of knowing I’d never see him again came over like huge waves of crushing certainty. “Yeah I Know” expresses the raw anger that it came from.

Joe: “Yeah I Know” was one of the earliest songs Rex brought to me for the album, and it really caught my attention. It became the big moment that we built the record around thematically.

Rex: This song gives me a lot of perspective, because I was in quite a state when we wrote it. It also reminds me of a metaphor my therapist at the time told me about regarding grief. They said that grief is like a ball symbolizing pain, it is inside a sphere, and the walls of the sphere are nerves. At first, the sphere is small and close; the ball is moving around, hitting nerves all the time, and it can be excruciating. Over time, the sphere expands, and while the pain stays the same, it hits the nerves less often, and becomes more manageable. I recognize this song as something I will continue to connect with for the rest of my life.

Rex: Being an artist, songwriting feels like a required experience, if only for its therapeutic benefit. It is one of the most effective ways I can express the emotion I experience from life’s obstacles. The writing of this album’s lyrics felt very urgent. They were often badly written into my journal while I was at work, at an airport bar in Seattle, or one song I wrote on Joe’s couch at 3 AM. When the band was together, and we recorded everyone’s parts and polished the arrangements, the band really connected, and it was validating to see how much we all enjoyed it. Our friendship is deeper, with a strong sense of community. It was the best I felt all year.

Joe: Creating this album came out of a few friends hanging out as much as we could over a year. We were being there for each other and making music together through the process because that’s just what we love to do.

Rex: I definitely hope to get the idea across to listeners that there is everything right and healthy about being completely real about how you feel. I’ve often felt understood by someone else’s music that is vulnerable in a way I’m not sure anything else could achieve. I hope to make that feeling happen for others. To feel more normal about being in a dark place emotionally, and believing that they can get to the other side as well.

Joe: I hope that listeners take away the friendship and care that was put into every song. We love making music, it’s one of the only things we really know how to do, and I think this album is us at our best.

Rex: These days I’m listening to a friend of ours, Breachway, who makes incredibly beautiful folk and indie music. They just dropped a new song, “Giving Tree.” It is very soothing and has some beautiful harmonies. Every single song of theirs is on my playlists. I also thoroughly enjoyed a new EP called Explosives, by indie folk artist August James. I found their music online, and I adore their writing style, poetic lyrics, and catchy melodies just like Breachway. Highly recommend them both, very refreshing writing styles.

Joe: Breachway is a huge one for me, their song “Anniversary” is one of my all-time favorite tracks, and they just put out a new recording of it last year that’s incredible. Western Reserve is another band I love, as well as Dethwish and The Problem with Kids Today.

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:: stream/purchase Yeah I Know here ::

:: connect with Litvar here ::

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Stream: “Yeah I Know” – Litvar

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