“Bad News” feels like a song about trying to live a normal life when everything around you feels increasingly abnormal. Was there a particular moment, headline or feeling that pushed you to finally write it?

I don’t think there was a particular moment. It was more of a general feeling that it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with the pace of everyday life nowadays. Everyone feels exhausted, too tired to protest, and yet we’re all drowning.

It’s also about how social media just ruined everything. It’s creating an army of zombies scrolling between cute cats and war crimes photos.

You talk about rights being challenged or taken away and the limits constantly being pushed. How much of “Bad News” comes from anger, and how much comes from exhaustion or even helplessness?

All of it! Being women — and queer women — existing in this patriarchal, oppressive world is a political statement. We’ve had enough.

There’s not a single show where some man doesn’t feel the need to mention that we’re an “all-women” band. Why not just a band? So we go onstage with a purpose every time. It’s representation.

There’s something very relatable about wanting to stay informed while realizing that consuming the news can make you completely miserable. How do each of you navigate that balance in your own lives?

It’s really difficult and challenging at times. You’ve got to choose your battles at some point. You can’t be battling on all fronts because you’re going to deplete all your energy. So we focus on advocating for what we can, what we feel strongly about, and try to stay focused on the positive.

Musically, the song moves between heavy riffs, a really melodic chorus and what you’ve described as a “metalcore breakdown.” Was making the music hit harder part of expressing what the song is about?

Definitely! The bridge is the climax. It’s where you reach your breaking point and you just want to scream.

The chorus reflects on how everything we were fed as millennials through pop culture left us with the feeling that we were cheated. Robbed of a future we thought would be a certain way but never existed. That’s why the melody is pop — it evokes a certain nostalgia.

We need to ask about “metalcore.” What exactly constitutes a metalcore breakdown in the Les Shirley universe, and are you officially claiming this genre now?

Haha, no. It’s kind of an oddball on this album. It reminds us of hardcore music breakdowns — heavy guitar riffs and halftime drums that break into double time later on. It also feels a bit like a Linkin Park song, which was nü-metal. So maybe it’s a mix of all that that gave us “metalcore.”

“Bad News” is the final single before Hail Mary arrives Sept. 25. Why did this feel like the last piece of the puzzle you wanted people to hear before revealing the album in full? And what does the title Hail Mary mean to you in the context of this record?

Actually, this song wasn’t supposed to come out! We planned on releasing only three singles, but our radio tracking and PR teams in Europe felt really strongly about “Bad News” and convinced us to release it.

Hail Mary means we’re going all in this time, without any filters and without knowing if it’s going to go somewhere. A message in a bottle. Our Hail Mary.

When RANGE spoke with you back in 2022, you were already pretty adamant about not being boxed into one particular version of rock or punk. Four years and a lot of touring later, do you feel like you’ve become even less interested in those boundaries?

Yeah, we feel the same for sure. We know that at first we were associated with nostalgia since punk rock, in people’s minds, peaked in the early 2000s. Now that it’s all coming back, it’s definitely changing, and we’re going somewhere else with this album.

Since then, you’ve gone from playing alongside bands like NOFX and Weezer to being personally invited to open for Foo Fighters in Montreal and touring Europe with Jimmy Eat World. Has being around bands operating at that level changed anything about the way you approach Les Shirley, either onstage or in the studio?

It taught us many things, for sure! We got better at our jobs, we got better at our instruments and at crowd work. Watching bands that have been on the road for 20-plus years and are still able to do it is very inspiring.

When you realize that you can play before a crowd of 80,000 people as if it was a hundred, that’s when you know you’ve come a long way. And the goal is always to have fun with it, to keep enjoying each other’s company and to grow as musicians and individuals.

There’s a tension in Les Shirley between writing songs that are genuinely pissed off and making them incredibly fun to listen to. Is that contrast something you consciously chase, especially on Hail Mary?

Thanks for the compliment! The hooks definitely come from our deep love for pop music. It’s our musical background. We always listen to pop in the van — people probably wouldn’t think that.

And we love heavy riffs and hard drums. It’s really fun to play live; it’s like therapy. Both genres come naturally to us, so it must be unconscious.

If “Bad News” captures the feeling of watching the world burn while trying to keep moving through everyday life, what does that song tell us about Hail Mary as a whole? Where does the album ultimately leave us, and is there any hope on the other side of it?

This song is one of the heaviest on the album. There’s a good balance on Hail Mary between heaviness and relief. It’s all about feminism, patriarchy, how it feels to be a woman nowadays, love, nostalgia and lust.

But it’s also about taking back our power and burning it all down to better rebuild. So yeah, there’s hope on the other side!