New Single • Brighter than Before EP (2026). Minneapolis, Minnesota, US.
Chutes Turn Midwest Nostalgia into Questions of Identity
Chutes is the Minneapolis indie-rock project of Ryan Kemp, whose songwriting connects fuzzy guitar textures with memory and self-reflection. Following December 2025’s Nothing’s Growing in the Yard, the forthcoming Brighter than Before EP brings vocalist Anna Devine further into the creative picture. Produced by Henry Breen, the five-track release is due November 13. Its second single, “Trace,” arrived on October 23, introducing a song whose central tension is immediately recognisable: changing without necessarily feeling different.
Trace: Moving Forward While Old Feelings Circle Back
The recording brings together Kemp’s vocals and guitar, Devine’s additional vocals, Chet Goldsberry Hill’s bass, Tanner Montague’s drums and Breen’s synth work. That combination places the song within Chutes’ established fuzz-pop framework while adding a collaborative dimension. On the page, its repeated phrases create a circular structure, returning to the same sensations rather than resolving them through a linear narrative.
My reading of the lyrics centres on the persistence of emotional memory. The opening places change beside sameness, while later images suggest an old hurt remaining physically imprinted. The recurring figure-eight motif gives that experience a shape: movement that continually crosses its previous path. “Trace” suggests that progress can coexist with feelings that remain difficult to leave behind.
Why It Matters: Indie Rock Finds Meaning in Unfinished Change
Songs about personal growth often gain their emotional force from uncertainty. Recognising an old pattern does not automatically end it, and a change in circumstances may take time to register internally. “Trace” offers a useful expression of that gap, allowing repetition to become part of its meaning.
For Chutes, this develops the interest in nostalgia and becoming that informed the previous EP. The focus here feels less concerned with recovering a particular past than understanding what it continues to leave behind. “Trace” finds its strongest idea in the possibility that moving forward still involves returning to familiar feelings.