Lowertown’s ‘Ugly Duckling Union’ is out now, and it’s the record the New York duo has been building toward their entire career.
Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg have signed to Summer Shade and delivered something genuinely ambitious: a fully self-written, self-recorded, self-produced, and self-mixed album that doubles as a conceptual world. The creative independence here is total, and the results make that clear.
Lead single “I Like You A Lot” arrives as a rare love song from the pair. A spry drumbeat and lo-fi, twangy guitars carry a lyric about the physical grip of infatuation, the obsessive pull of admiring someone before you even know them. It’s warm, a little restless, and entirely alive.
The band put it plainly: the song “was written about the hope of a new crush, and the intoxicating feelings of admiring and fantasizing about someone from afar.” They describe that feeling as “almost like a sickness taking over the body, but maybe not in a particularly bad way.” That kind of honest, layered writing runs all through this record.
‘Ugly Duckling Union’ grew out of a difficult stretch. Constant touring, a label split, creative frustration, and the particular intensity of navigating all of it in their late teens and early 20s pushed their friendship and artistic partnership to the edge. Returning to their roots, both in Atlanta and in the online communities that shaped them, brought the album into focus.
The conceptual spine of the record follows Dale, a duckling protagonist, and his companions as they resist LBH, a tyrannical media corporation built on isolation and control. It’s a framework inspired by the communal creativity of Gorillaz and the audience-first ethics of Fugazi, and it comes loaded with accompanying materials: a playable Minecraft world, drawn comics by Doctor Nowhere (Silas Orion), plush dolls, and a full handbook.
Osby describes the album’s spirit directly: “Our home has been the people who make us feel understood, and the music that makes us feel understood. I feel like Avsha and I have just been two misfits doing stuff together, and I feel like this music is for people like us, it’s for the misfit toys.”
The record lands with real emotional range, from the tender pull of “I Like You A Lot” to the blunt charge of “DIPSH*T,” and every moment reflects a duo fully in command of their own sound.
Lowertown are on the road now through late June, wrapping with a hometown show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom.
‘Ugly Duckling Union’ Tracklist:
01 Mice Protection
02 Worst Friend
03 Echo of Desire
04 Forgive Yourself
05 Big Thumb
06 Cover You
07 I Like You A Lot
08 (I Like To Play With) Mutts
09 DIPSH*T
10 Anything Good Takes Blood
11 Found A
12 Some Things Never End
2026 Tour Dates:
May 9th – Chicago, IL @ Subterranean
May 10th – Whitefish Bay, WI @ The Argo
May 12th – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry
May 13th – Des Moines, IA @ xBK
May 14th – Lawrence, KS @ The White Schoolhouse
May 16th – Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge
May 18th – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
May 19th – Boise, ID @ Shrine Social Club
May 22nd – Seattle, WA @ Baba Yaga
May 23rd – Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
May 26th – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
May 29th – Orange County, CA @ Constellation Room
May 30th – Los Angeles, CA @ The Roxy
May 31st – San Diego, CA @ Quartyard
June 8th – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar
June 11th – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger
June 12th – Austin, TX @ 29th St Ballroom
June 13th – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
June 15th – Nashville, TN @ The End
June 17th – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade (HELL)
June 19th – Jacksonville, FL @ Hard Love
June 20th – Orlando, FL @ Conduit
June 22nd – Miami, FL @ Lincoln’s Beard
June 23rd – Tampa, FL @ The Orpheum
June 25th – Durham, NC @ The Pinhook
June 26th – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd
June 27th – New York City, NY @ Bowery Ballroom