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Ebbb Announce Debut Album Shallow Hits: Hear “Now You Know”
London quartet Ebbb announce debut album Shallow Hits, out July 10 on Ninja Tune, and share "Now You Know" — syncopated drums, African-tinged guitar, and Will Rowland's insistent melody.
There is a particular thrill when a band that has been cutting its teeth in a local scene suddenly feels like it could take over a room twice its size. Ebbb, a London four-piece born out of Brixton’s Windmill nights, have been inching toward that feeling for months with singles like “Home Ground” and “Book That You Like”. Now they have a debut album, Shallow Hits, due July 10 on Ninja Tune, and a new single, “Now You Know,” that makes the case for why people have been paying attention.
“Now You Know” opens with a propulsive, slightly impatient pulse: syncopated live drums that push the track forward and a knife-edge guitar figure that nods to West African picking without ever feeling like pastiche. The melody Will Rowland sings is airy but insistent; at moments his phrasing slides into a territory that reminded me of Panda Bear’s wistful upper-register, that mix of nostalgia and propulsion.
In the Windmill, those drums land like a physical thing. At the shows I caught this spring, the song tightened the room. People moved as a unit. It is a single that still feels urgent when played small—the kind you notice growing louder as it leaves the stage and spreads across playlists.
“Now You Know” started life as a playful, riff-led instrumental. Each layer brought the song to life – first the vocals with lyrics that depict obsessive love, and then the punchiness of the live drum groove, which really tied the song together in the studio. The song is the most playful and optimistic on the album.
That quote from Rowland is useful. The track really is built up in clear stages: a skeleton riff, the vocal that grounds it emotionally, and then the drums that turn everything mechanical into something propulsive. It sits alongside “Home Ground” on the tracklist as one of Shallow Hits’ brighter moments, the kind of song that will probably open up doors for them beyond the Windmill circuit.
Shallow Hits is not all lightness. The record’s title and the song titles suggest a preoccupation with small, sharp moments of feeling – flirtations that read as both tender and a little uneasy. The album sequence, which runs from “Come Alive” to “I’m Not Enough,” frames those moments in a compact set of eleven songs that are concise and immediate.
Tracklist:
- “Come Alive”
- “Home Ground”
- “Now You Know”
- “Pander”
- “Side On”
- “Shallow Hits”
- “Remedy”
- “You’ve Got Me Where You Want Me”
- “Moving On”
- “Youth”
- “I’m Not Enough”
Fans who have followed Ebbb through the Windmill’s stacked bills will recognize the compact attention to groove and melody that has carried them so far. Signing to Ninja Tune feels like a logical next step: the label has a history of giving experimental pop and leftfield indie enough room to breathe while placing records into new contexts.
Shallow Hits arrives July 10 on Ninja Tune. Pre-orders are open now. If you want to see how these songs land live, keep an eye on their upcoming dates; “Now You Know” already sounds like one that will pull a room together and not let go.
