Medium Build’s Nick Carpenter channels ’90s pop-country warmth and wry humor through “Home Depot,” a compassionate character study of emotionally unavailable men who can repair everything around them while remaining helpless before their own hurt. An irresistible singalong with arms outstretched, it’s a radiant, big-hearted reminder to check on the Steves in our lives who always show up with tools in hand, and to make room for them to admit when they’re the ones who need some help.

Stream: “Home Depot” – Medium Build

His heart’s the only project he ain’t got the tools to figure out…

* * *

Steve can fix almost anything except himself.

He can build a house, patch a wall, locate the right part in plumbing, and hold court at the bar with a toothpick in his mouth.

Ask what broke his heart, though, and the whole structure starts to shake.

Medium Build’s “Home Depot” meets that familiar man with humor first and compassion close behind. The second single off Nick Carpenter’s upcoming sixth album, King of Having Fun, is a truly enchanting, soul-stirring character study – a ‘90s pop-country jam full of sway and heart, ache and charm, with an irresistibly catchy chorus and a guitar solo bright enough to melt even Steve’s guarded heart.

Released July 24 via slowplay/Island Records, “Home Depot” follows the feverish “Armor,” which introduced Medium Build’s upcoming sixth album with Carpenter’s intrusive thoughts laid bare, and offers another glimpse into an album he has described to Atwood Magazine as both a “letter from rehab” and a “post-mortem” of the person he spent the past decade becoming. Carpenter himself is no stranger to these pages – Atwood has followed Medium Build closely through several chapters of his career, during which his candid songwriting and visceral vocals have established him as one of the most compelling artists of recent years, with a singular gift for making private damage funny, musical, and impossible to look away from.

“Armor” set the tone in a charged and charming rush, with Carpenter tearing through all the defenses, addictions, and self-mythologies he had spent years constructing. A brutally candid self-portrait, its breathless self-interrogation framed King of Having Fun as an album intent on taking stock of the man he became and the trauma carried forward. “Home Depot” widens the frame from Carpenter’s own self-examination to the buried hurt he recognizes in the men around him. He shifts his gaze toward Steve, a composite of stepdads, uncles, fathers, husbands, and pieces of himself – a man who pours his energy into physical labor because the emotional kind remains so much harder to face.

The song began in a conversation with songwriter Annika Bennett about relationships and the men in their lives, then took shape in a session with Lori McKenna and Ben West. Carpenter brought it to life with Maya de Vitry’s fiddle, Billy Justineau’s dancing keys, and J.R. Atkins’ glorious ‘90s country guitar solo – a full-band performance whose warmth and lift allow Steve’s heavier truths to sneak up on us.

He’s at the home depot
buying all the stuff to build a house
He’s storming in to plumbing
talkin’ with a toothpick in his mouth
Can’t tell him nothing
he’s a pro at almost everything
You got a question you just
ask him it’s like googling
Ain’t it a handful, the things
we do to keep the demons down?

Hey Steve’s been building
walls since you were 17
Hey Steve, hammered
watching movies on repeat
Hey Steve, is this how you pretend
to keep it cool in a world so mean?

Steve enters with a toothpick in his mouth and an answer for everything. He’s storming through plumbing, holding court at the bar, losing money on the game, and assuring everyone that “you can’t call it drunk driving if you’re not driving very far.” Carpenter sketches him with care and hilarious precision, capturing the guy who can build a house, patch a wall, and diagnose any practical problem placed in front of him – provided nobody asks what’s happening inside.

“Inside every one of us is a man unwilling to discuss the heavy, deep, painful, and emotional,” Carpenter writes of the song.

That half-joke opens into a portrait of masculinity built around deflection. Steve has been “building walls since [he] was 17,” handling every wound the only way he knows how: “Shove it down, bottle up, let it loose then pack it up / Start a fight, break stuff, punch a hole, patch it up.” Carpenter lets the list tumble forward with comic momentum until its violence starts to register. The same hands that repair every broken thing around him remain useless when the damage belongs to him.

Carpenter initially approached Steve through the women caught in his path – partners who keep forgiving these men because they are handy, dependable, and capable of care in every language except the one the relationship needs. The harm here comes from emotional vacancy: Years spent hoping a repaired gutter, a stocked pantry, or a perfectly maintained home might eventually become intimacy.

“‘He’s so handy.’ ‘He comes through when I need him.’ ‘Thank God he was here – we would have been up to our knees in water when the bathroom flooded.’ These accolades buy the guy a parking pass in the woman’s life,” Carpenter remarks. “He knows that to gain the softness and comfort of her arms, he has to keep the thing on the rails. This routine is universal. It’s a dance even the critters know. Mating rituals and bargaining. Teens learn it at school dances. College kids play house, strolling the farmers market on Saturdays, masquerading as grown ups with shared bank accounts and a stunning recipe for a jicama kale slaw that would slap at the cook out tonight. All around us there are millions of people dying to be in love. And when a product is in great demand the price goes up. The price in my friend’s friend’s case was her sanity.”

The cost Carpenter names accumulates through repetition: Trust breaks, tempers flare, apologies restore the relationship, and practical usefulness earns Steve another chance. Carpenter locates the harm in emotional vacancy – the slow erosion of loving someone who can maintain the house yet cannot offer emotional intimacy within it. What keeps these couples together remains deliberately unresolved, tangled in love, habit, need, resignation, and the hard-earned belief that some battles are easier to live around than fight. Steve’s story reaches beyond one relationship because, as Carpenter writes, “We know these people because they are us. Emotionally complex kids who grow up and after getting knocked down by life several times, we accept a truth that some battles aren’t worth fighting.”

“I’m not advocating for everyone leaving an emotionally vacant guy,” he adds. “I’m not not advocating for it either, but more so I’m curious what leads us and leaves us in these situations.”

He’s at the Long Branch
holding up a corner of the bar
(Who broke your heart?)
And he says, “can’t call it drunk driving
if you’re not driving very far”
(Ain’t no one’s checkin on ya)
He lost a hundred bucks
betting with his buddies on the game
He’s always takin’ credit
but he ain’t ever takin’ blame

Hey Steve, been building walls
since you were 17
Hey Steve, hammered watchin’
movies on repeat
Hey Steve, is this how you pretend
to keep it cool in a world so mean?

At the Long Branch, Steve’s masculinity becomes a public performance. He props up the bar, gambles with his buddies, takes credit without taking blame, and converts hurt into the kinds of rituals men are taught to recognize as camaraderie. Yet Carpenter keeps interrupting the portrait with the questions nobody in Steve’s life appears willing to ask: “Who broke your heart?” and “Ain’t no one’s checkin’ on ya.” Those asides shift the song from comic observation toward concern, revealing how a man can remain conspicuously present while going emotionally unseen. The closer Carpenter looks, the less comfortably Steve remains someone else.

“‘Home Depot’ is about the man in your life more focused on the external than internal,” Carpenter explains. “The lawn is manicured and the mustache is trimmed. He appears as stepdads or uncles. Some of us know him as father or husband. He works hard and plays hard, although work is often also his play.”

“When I set out to write this song, I wanted to commiserate with the women stuck in the orbits of these men. I was curious how we stay stuck to these guys. As I dug in, what I found was a humanization of the Steves in my life and a realization that even on my best day, I am really just like him.”

Yeah shove it down, bottle up,
let it loose then pack it up
Start a fight, break stuff,
punch a hole, patch it up
Storm out, disappear,
show up with another beer,
Clench jaw, tight lip,
pretend that you don’t give a shit

The pattern runs deeper than drinking, disappearing, and clenched-jaw bravado. Carpenter traces those behaviors back to a version of masculinity that prizes usefulness while leaving men woefully unequipped for intimacy. “Steve is every stepdad you’ve ever met,” he says. “There’s emotional labor and there’s physical labor, and I find that a lot of men don’t know how to do emotional labor, so they overdo physical labor.”

“By the end of the tune, I realized… I’m writing a love letter to the men in my life, saying, ‘Hey, brother, take it easy. Let us in.’”

Carpenter’s compassion gives “Home Depot” its staying power. Steve begins as a caricature and gradually comes into focus as a person who learned to confuse capability with strength, usefulness with worth, and silence with control.

When Carpenter finally cries, “Who broke your heart?” the question lands without a trace of mockery. Beneath the bravado sits a man nobody has thought to check on, carrying pain he lacks the language to name.

“Check on the men in your life,” Carpenter shares. “And boys, let yourself cry a little.”

Carpenter saves the song’s deepest cut for last: “He’s at the Home Depot buying all the stuff to build a house / His heart’s the only project he ain’t got the tools to figure out.” “Home Depot” makes us grin, sway, and sing along before quietly breaking us open – another breathtaking reminder that nobody can turn the everyday rituals of hurt, avoidance, and longing into music quite like Medium Build.

By meeting Steve with love and laughter instead of contempt, Carpenter props the door open for recognition, accountability, and maybe even change – leaving us with a catchy, cathartic love letter to every man who’s spent years building walls, and an invitation to finally put the tools down.

Hey Steve, who broke your heart?
Hey Steve, ain’t no one checkin’ on him?
Hey Steve, is this how you pretend
to keep it cool in a world so mean?
Cool in a world that’s so mean?

He’s at the home depot
buying all the stuff to build a house
His heart’s the only project
he ain’t got the tools to figure out

— —

:: read more about Medium Build here ::

— —

:: stream/purchase Home Depot here ::

:: pre-order King of Having Fun here ::

:: connect with Medium Build here ::

— —

Stream: “Home Depot” – Medium Build

— — — —

Connect to Medium Build on
Facebook, 𝕏, TikTok, Instagram

Discover new music on Atwood Magazine

 © Beth Garrabrant

:: Stream Medium Build ::