Water From Your Eyes, Her New Knife

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Adam Powell

The two members of Water From Your Eyes.

Water From Your Eyes

media release: Water From Your Eyes are Brooklyn-based duo Nate Amos (This is Lorelei) and Rachel Brown (thanks for coming) – now a four-piece on stage with Al Nardo (guitar) and Bailey Wollowitz (drums) – who will support It’s a Beautiful Place during the band’s North American tour this Fall.  

The band just released their album ‘It’s a Beautiful Place’ via Matador Records, which was named “Best New Music” (8.3) on Pitchfork. They finished the record last summer, just as they have with every other WFYE release: in Amos’ bedroom, under the watchful eye of a tattered Robin Williams poster from the Mork & Mindy era.

‘It’s a Beautiful Place’ has since been met with an outpouring of praise and good will, including rave reviews at Pitchfork (8.3 Best New Music), Stereogum (Album of the Week), Bandcamp (Album of the Day), Paste (8.7), and more. The duo were also interviewed in Rolling Stone, FADER, Nylon, the Needle Drop, Blackbird Spyplane, and Flaunt.

In this feature via NYLON, Nate and Rachel talk about the band’s history, Brooklyn DIY, and trying to bring a slightly more optimistic outlook to ‘It’s a Beautiful Place’. 

“The near-uncategorizable duo — producer/songwriter Nate Amos and vocalist Rachel Brown, who met in Chicago in 2016, formed the band, and briefly dated — have become one of those bands that everyone who knows says you should know.”

Throughout ‘It’s a Beautiful Place’ is a clear sense of a band who have honed their curveballs into home runs. Looming and melancholy, wide-eyed and petrified, it’s Blade Runner with a touch of WALL-E, it’s Kubrick and Asimov with a hint of Jay and Silent Bob. These are songs that look outward, conscious of our smallness and questioning our place in the universe while admiring the surrounding beauty.

Philadelphia band Her New Knife are excited to share their cover of Björk’s “Pagan Poetry,” digitally available everywhere now via the tastemaking Philly label Julia’s War Recordings. A guitar-forward take on the fan-favorite track off Björk’s 2001 record Vespertine, today’s cover sees the band infuse discordant instrumentation into a deeply emotional soundscape. Her New Knife strives for sonic innovation, turning a familiar track into a completely new experience.

“Björk as an artist has always inspired me. In her songwriting, I’ve always found something very important to take note of. Whether that be her lyrical imagery, sonic texturing, expression and inflection of the voice, or the pursuit of something new and personal and raw in her music,” guitarist and vocalist Edgar Atencio explains. 

“In 2024, Ben [Kachler] and I recorded mostly guitar (classical and electric) and voice (additional vocals by Dylan Vaisey & Cassidy Hammond), in juxtaposition to the varied and lush orchestration of the original track, I wanted our version to be sparse and more focused on just guitar and voice- in an attempt to embody the rawness of Björk’s performance. This cover is something that I felt we could do in our own way, as a tribute to all these aspects of her music that I hold close.”

Last year, Her New Knife shared their six-song EP, chrome is lullaby, via Julia’s War Recordings. Featuring quickly rising songs like “kitty riff” and “vitamin beauty,” the release was widely acclaimed by tastemakers such as The FADER, Post-Trash, Stereogum and NME, the latter of which added them to the NME100, declaring the band as one to watch for 2025. The group is currently working on their debut album, expected to be released in 2026. 

Her New Knife has had a major year of playing shows across North America. From opening for julie, TAGABOW, Frost Children and Midrift to appearing at Nothing.’s Slide Away Festival and playing eleven sets this year at SXSW in Austin, TX, the band has a nonstop touring schedule. It continues this summer as they support SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE across the U.S. this summer and open for Water From Your Eyes this fall. For more information on upcoming performances, see below and follow the band on Instagram at @hernewknife.