Brisbane rock band Radium Dolls thrive on contradiction, making sweat-soaked rock ‘n’ roll that’s frantic “and sometimes sweet,” with authentic storytelling, scrappy charisma, and a refusal to burn out. On the devastatingly bittersweet “Moving,” they capture the tenderness of a breakup handled with care, while their electrifying sophomore album ‘Wound Up’ channels life’s pressure, chaos, and restless momentum into a glorious, raw release.

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Stream: “Moving” – Radium Dolls

There’s something authentic to me about writing your lived experience unrelentingly and honestly. We were all a bit wound up, but we love to play and create, and we tried to turn that feeling into something cool.

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Breaking up is rarely a clean cut – it lingers in the smallest, most mundane moments, in the quiet, necessary acts that force two people to confront the end of what they built together.

On “Moving,” Brisbane rock band Radium Dolls capture that fragile in-between with devastating clarity, turning the act of packing up a shared life into a brutally intimate portrait of love unraveling in real time. This is not a song about the fight or the fallout, but about what comes after – the tenderness, the shock, and the quiet grace of two people still showing up for each other as everything falls apart.

She helped me move to a new place
When we were moving on
She saw the look on my face
When I saw her stuff was gone
And she stayed just a little bit longer
She let me take anything that I wanted
All the while her heart was
breaking just like mine was
Just like mine was

Taken from Radium Dolls’ recently-released sophomore album Wound Up (out now), “Moving” arrives as one of the record’s most emotionally exposed moments – a stark contrast to the band’s reputation for high-octane, ‘70s-tinged rock ‘n’ roll. Known for their explosive live presence and gritty, guitar-driven sound, the Australian four-piece – frontman Will Perkins, guitarist Tom Perkins, bassist Ewan Day, and drummer Bryce Equinox – have steadily carved out a space defined by both swagger and sincerity, pairing sharp lyricism with a raw, lived-in intensity that hits just as hard on record as it does on stage.

That balance – between force and fragility – has defined their rise. From early EPs like Bel-Haven to their debut album Legal Speed, Radium Dolls have built a following on unfiltered storytelling and dynamic musicianship, earning national acclaim and selling out shows across Australia. With Wound Up, they push that ethos further, embracing both urgency and vulnerability as they navigate life’s shifting pressures and personal upheavals.

She saw me choked up,
dragging our old mattress
Up the stairs and into nothingness
She lifted the other end
I thought that she was doing fine
But her heart was breaking
just like mine was
Just like mine

She stayed just a little bit longer
She let me take anything that I wanted
And all the while
Her heart was breaking just like mine was
Just like mine was
Just like mine
All the while…

“Moving” sits at the emotional core of that journey.

Centered on the act of leaving a home after a breakup, the song traces the strange intimacy of two people dismantling their shared world piece by piece – carrying boxes, lifting mattresses, lingering just a little longer than necessary. It’s a scene rendered with painful precision, where every gesture feels loaded with meaning, and every silence speaks louder than words.

What makes “Moving” hit as hard as it does is the way Radium Dolls let the story unfold in plain sight, resisting metaphor in favor of lived detail. Will Perkins doesn’t obscure the moment – he walks us through it, step by step, dragging mattresses, carrying pieces of a shared life up and out, each line feeling like a memory you can’t quite shake. There’s a rawness to that approach that leaves no room to hide; every word lands with the weight of experience, exposing not just the end of a relationship, but the quiet, complicated care that lingers in its aftermath.

That vulnerability crests in the chorus, where the song’s restraint gives way to release. Perkins’ voice stretches and strains as he holds onto the word “while,” letting it unravel into a sustained, aching cry – a single syllable transformed into an all-consuming feeling. Around him, guitars roar and swell, drums crash and pulse, and the entire arrangement surges forward, capturing the intimate gravity of two people breaking side by side. It’s not just a climax; it’s a moment of emotional overflow, where everything that’s been held in finally spills out.

Frontman Will Perkins draws directly from lived experience.

“Having recently moved out of my house… my long-term ex-partner and I had just split, and it was a difficult and tumultuous time for both of us,” he shares. “Despite this, we remained supportive of each other and she came to help me with my things when I was struggling emotionally and physically with the workload and new beginnings.”

That shared weight defines the song’s emotional pull. “It’s still about the same thing: A past love of mine,” Perkins adds. “She’s one of the greatest people I know – it just didn’t work out. In the end, we parted ways, but we’ll always be friends and care deeply about each other.” There’s no villain here, no dramatic rupture – just two hearts breaking in parallel, each carrying their own version of the same loss.

She helped me move to a new place
When we were moving on
She saw the look on my face
When I saw her stuff was gone

And she stayed just a little bit longer
She let me take anything that I wanted
And all the while
Her heart was breaking just like mine was
Just like mine was
Just like mine

Musically, Radium Dolls translate that quiet devastation into a slow-burning alternative rock swell – overdriven guitars ringing out like echoes in an empty room, heavy drums grounding each moment with a sense of finality. The song builds patiently, its raw, exposed vocal performance feeling less like entertainment and more like a diary entry set to sound. Every note lands with intention, every shift in intensity mirroring the emotional undercurrent that threatens to spill over at any moment.

In the end, “Moving” doesn’t try to resolve the pain it holds – it honors it. It recognizes the rare, complicated beauty of a goodbye handled with care, where love doesn’t disappear so much as change shape. Radium Dolls capture that fleeting, fragile grace with unflinching honesty, turning a deeply personal memory into a universal reckoning: Even as we let go, part of us is always still holding on, stretching that moment out just a little bit longer – all the while.

Across the rest of Wound Up, that release comes in louder, stranger, more combustible forms, revealing a band using pressure as both problem and propulsion.

Written across fragmented sessions and jam-led rehearsals while life kept intruding – work, tours, relationships ending and beginning, the daily grind pressing in around the urge to create – the album sounds wound up in every sense: Coiled with tension, hungry for release, and always one spark away from kicking the door open.

“Wound Up was written during a time where we were all going through a lot of life changes,” drummer Bryce Equinox shares. “For me, it was leaving a long-term relationship, and for others, it was starting new relationships and commitments while managing full-time jobs. We were trying to just deal with life in between our uncontrollable desire to create. To me, this album is a landmark in our career and proved how capable we are at making meaningful art no matter the circumstances.”

The pressure belongs to the whole band. “Wound Up came together in a busy time period for us both as a band, and in our own personal lives,” Tom Perkins says. “Wanting to put a record out to accompany tours was a goal of ours. Wound Up, to us, is a story of pressing on through difficult periods in our lives, and finding time to put everything aside and collaborate with other people to make something great.”

Will Perkins frames it as an ethic as much as an album: “We want to be prolific, and there’s something authentic to me about writing your lived experience unrelentingly and honestly. In this case, we were all so busy with work and home life, and there was a bit of pressure. We were all a bit wound up, but we love to play and create, and we tried to turn that feeling into something cool.”

“Moving” may be, as Will Perkins puts it, “the ‘chillest’ song off the record; the calm in the eye of the storm,” but the storm around it matters.

“Radio” opens Wound Up by taking a bat to stale entertainment culture, barking “Get off my radio” with the comic irritation of a band allergic to boredom. “Scorching Heat” follows with pressure bubbling under the pleasure, its chorus making a lovely day sound like a dare, while “Daddy” lands with a nastier grin, skewering inherited wealth, entitlement, and colonial rot through grotesque character work rather than a neat sermon.

Then there is “Rat Song (For a Film),” the track Radium Dolls were most collectively eager to unleash. Tom Perkins named “Rat Song” alongside album closer “All That Falls”; Ewan Day echoed him; Will Perkins simply answered, “RAT SONG.” The obsession makes sense. “Rat Song” feels like the album’s mythic underbelly, pulling childhood geography, small-town escape, and animal instinct into one of the record’s most vivid stories: “This town is a snake / It’s no place for a rat.” It is funny until it isn’t, cinematic until the survival panic gets too close, and by the time Perkins sings “They say people don’t just disappear / But round here they do,” the song has turned scurrying away into its own kind of hard-won freedom.

Stay or scurry away
Not everyone gets to choose
They say people don’t just disappear
But round here they do
And they don’t come back

This town, it is a snake
It’s no place, no place for a rat

The back half keeps widening the record’s emotional range. “Wheels Fall Off” blasts forward like a mission statement – reckless, chantable, stubborn – while “Favourite” lets romance arrive with a crooked grin and a silver Volvo parked in the driveway. By the time closer “All That Falls” drifts through ash, sand, soil, and cigarette smoke, Radium Dolls have carried Wound Up beyond breakup grief into a wider reckoning with pressure, motion, memory, and release. The album burns because it refuses to separate survival from joy; even at its heaviest, the band sound thrilled by the fact that they’re still here, still loud, still making the mess sing.

Radium Dolls recently sat down with Atwood Magazine to trace how Wound Up took shape between breakups, new commitments, full-time jobs, tour pressure, and the uncontrollable need to create – and how “Moving” became the record’s softest, most aching exhale. The song may be the calm in the eye of the storm, but Wound Up proves Radium Dolls are at their best when life gets loud, messy, funny, heavy, and alive.

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:: stream/purchase Wound Up here ::

:: connect with Radium Dolls here ::

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Stream: ‘Wound Up’ – Radium Dolls

A CONVERSATION WITH RADIUM DOLLS

Radium Dolls: We’re a rock and roll band from Australia. You’re gonna hear about us sooner or later; may as well get the jump on it.

Will Perkins (frontman): Bowie, Iggy, Nicholas Allbrook from Pond was an early influence, Jonathan Richman…also a big hip hop fan; Jay-Z, MF DOOM. Our sound is a bit frantic and sometimes sweet.

Tom Perkins (guitarist): I would say for each member it’s probably different, and we don’t really think too much about sounding in line with our influences. Personally, I really like Australian bands like the Peep Tempel and The Drones.

Ewan Day (bassist): I think we just try to write good songs and try not to worry about having a specific sound.

Tom: We had our first single coming out and we needed a name. Will was inspired by the Radium Girls story and history, and we ended up choosing Radium Dolls.

Will: Yeah, Tom has about summed it up; I was reading a lot about the Radium Girls, and my partner at the time suggested ‘Dolls,’ so we ran with it.

Tom: Wound Up came together in a busy time period for us both as a band, and in our own personal lives. Wanting to put a record out to accompany tours was a goal of ours. Wound Up, to us, is a story of pressing on through difficult periods in our lives, and finding time to put everything aside and collaborate with other people to make something great.

Will: We want to be prolific, and there’s something authentic to me about writing your lived experience unrelentingly and honestly. In this case, we were all so busy with work and home life, and there was a bit of pressure. We were all a bit wound up, but we love to play and create, and we tried to turn that feeling into something cool.

Tom: I think it does a good job of capturing the band and our writing style. All these songs feel slightly different stylistically, but you can feel they all belong to the same thing.

Will: I’d say it’s as eclectic as you’d expect from us; lots of different sounding songs that kind of run an emotional gamut. We don’t ever want to be too much of one thing, so I’m pleased that we’ve got diversity in this record again. Wound Up isn’t really about anything in particular; just a collection of reflection, and I’m proud of it cause we keep working no matter what, and I think that’s the essence of us as a band.

Will: It’s still about the same thing: a past love of mine. She’s one of the greatest people I know – it just didn’t work out. In the end, we parted ways, but we’ll always be friends and care deeply about each other, and it felt nice to write an ode to her. She loves it, which is even sweeter.

Will: It’s definitely the ‘chillest’ song off the record; the calm in the eye of the storm, I guess. It’s kinda like the “Casino” of our last record, but we always have a few of those up our sleeves. I think it fits in nicely because when we get wound up, ultimately we need to find a release, and that’s what “Moving” is.

Tom: “Rat Song” or the album closer, “All That Falls”

Ewan: Also “Rat Song”

Will: “RAT SONG”

Ewan: Kind of similar to our first record in that it’s a mixture of different genres, but I feel like we’ve improved in our playing and production. We also did a few tracks live on the new album.

Will: Definitely feels like an evolution. As a band, we continue to get tighter, and that always translates. We’re not trying to make the same thing twice, so I would say they’re different, but you can tell it’s us.

Will: I hope they love it! I hope they take it and play it for years and years to come, and connect to it and share it around. Making music leaves a legacy, and I’m just so proud of myself and the boys cause it ain’t easy. We all work so hard in our lives and we get a bit wound up from time to time. Who doesn’t?

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:: stream/purchase Wound Up here ::

:: connect with Radium Dolls here ::

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Stream: “Moving” – Radium Dolls

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 © Saskia Kovandzich

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