In 2021, toward the end of summer, Sweet Nobody released their second album, We’re Trying Our Best. In many ways, the world felt like it was taking tentative steps toward equilibrium after what was, to put it mildly, a difficult stretch. The album spoke to the universal desire for human connection, the yearning for things dancing in front of us, seemingly just out of reach, and the dignity and power in trying one’s best, even as our inner critic may be suggesting a different story. In case you had any doubt, it was right there in the title, but every lyric read like a diary entry, sincere and unabashedly vulnerable. Simultaneously nostalgic yet completely of the moment, We’re Trying Our Best remains one of the most accomplished releases of that very strange year.

Now, it’s 2025, the band has returned with Driving off to Nowhere, and again, it feels exactly right for the time. An album writeup is no place for a treatise on geopolitics, but we can all acknowledge that strange year certainly had unexpected legs, and while we’re here, hopefully still trying our best, the fantasy that one might get into a car and drive off to nowhere is more potent than ever. And yet, Sweet Nobody isn’t about a nihilistic trip. Yes, the first line of the album is, “Life as I know it will never return,” but the melody and vocals are so poignantly lovely they feel more like an invitation than an epitaph. The final moment of the album features a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to “Cleo,” the first track of their 2017 debut album, Loud Songs for Quiet People. The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes, as the saying goes, and maybe it’s ultimately a road to nowhere but time and experience shows that’s not the point of it all. Sweet Nobody is focused on the space between.

The band acknowledges it’s a moody album, informed by memories, sweet, painful, or both. While their first two albums were written and recorded before the pandemic, this one was born during that time and shows it, with drummer Brian Dishon working out drum parts and melody lines to the demos singer/songwriter/guitarist Joy Deyo would send to him as he drove around Southern California, delivering groceries to the quarantined. Alone in the moment, yet inextricably connected on another level, historical particulars may change, but this is as apt a metaphor for Sweet Nobody as I’ve ever heard. As Deyo recalls the freedom and joy of riding in the car as a child with her older sister when she got her driver’s license, away from the adult world and listening to the kind of pop music they wanted to hear, Sweet Nobody makes perfect sense: the yearning for freedom and connection in the face of constraints, both external and self-imposed, set to a beautiful tune.

And luckily some things have certainly improved from those surreal and difficult days. Lead guitarist Casey Snyder and bassist Adam Nolan are able to record in the same room with Deyo and Dishon, breathing the same air, helping the album to sound full, bright, and connected, even as the themes get serious. The band’s ability to soften the edges of difficult feelings with the loveliest of melodies has only gotten stronger with each release, and it’s never been more appreciated. Sweet Nobody says Driving off to Nowhere can be thought of as a night driving album (like the best albums are), but drive long enough, with this album on repeat, and you eventually see the sun.

Driving Off to Nowhere

Not a Good Judge, the first single from our upcoming album We’re Trying Our Best is about getting out of your own way when you don’t believe you deserve the best. Lead singer/songwriter Joy Deyo: “Not a Good Judge is about pushing past doubt, even when it’s your own. Sometimes you have to put anxiety in its place. It’s about listening to past or future versions of yourself that had or will have more faith in your abilities than you have in the moment.”

Not A Good Judge

Second single from the upcoming album We're Trying Our Best out 9/17 on Daydream Records.

About Why Don't You Break My Heart, lead singer/songwriter Joy Deyo says: "Along with physical pain, there is a lot of mental anguish that comes with sickness. It feels a little like you’re dying while you’re still alive—mourning parts of yourself that don’t work anymore and longing for the things that you can no longer do with ease.
In grief, I found myself saying things to my husband like, “if you want to leave me and find someone else who isn’t sick, I’ll understand. You didn’t sign up for this. Of course, I didn’t want him to. And he didn’t want to either. So instead I wrote a song about it. Songs can speak your fears and the things you hope will never happen just as well as they can speak your dreams. And if you can take that darkness and make it a bop, well that’s just more fun for everyone!"

Why Don't You Break My Heart

"Sometimes I feel like I’m on the outside looking into my own life. Always one misstep away from losing my standing as a believable human. I felt alone in that for so long: “Why can’t I just be normal? What is this space that divides me from other people? Is it even real or just perceived? Maybe other people feel trapped in their own minds too.” I did a co-writing session with someone once and they told me that you should never ask a question in a song. I thought that was total nonsense! I started doing it on purpose just out of defiance. Music is a viable way of communicating. Why can’t I ask a question? Maybe you know the answer. Maybe it will get you thinking, sorting, figuring out something in your own life. Other Humans is a question and it’s a shout out to anyone who’s ever felt like they were somehow stuck on the outskirts of something resembling normal human-hood. And maybe that’s pretty normal after all." -Joy

Third single from our upcoming album We're Trying Our Best, out 9/17 on Daydream Records.

We're Trying Our Best

Other Humans

Young love is awkward and difficult. It’s pure adrenaline. It’s all the wobbly moments of a life, compiled and relived in the middle of the night. The thing is, that stuff doesn’t necessarily go away as you grow. Maybe your life starts to look more put together as you get to know yourself better. But there’s always that little part of your brain that will wake you up at 3am to agonize over the time you said goodbye to your crush and then you both walked off in the same direction. You can be 14, 24, or 84, being in love--being vulnerable and yearning for connection with someone else--still feels the same.

Young In Love

Our cover of the Undertones' classic and the B-side of a 7 inch released by Lazyperfection Records. Order yours stateside from our bandcamp page
https://sweet-nobody.bandcamp.com/album/five-star-diary-b-w-here-comes-the-summer
or internationally from the Lazyperfection site
https://lazyperfection.jp/

Here Comes The Summer

A remix of White Lies by good buddy and drum n bass DJ extraordinaire Ronnie Dunmore. Check out more of his work here: 

http://rontwo3.com/

White Lies (RonTwo3 remix)

A cover of Joanna Newsom’s Bridges & Balloons recorded during the sessions for We’re Trying Our Best in 2019.

Engineered & Mixed by Joel Jerome at Hurley Studios and Psychedelic Thriftstore

Bridges & Balloons

A cover of Joanna Newsom’s Peach, Plum, Pear recorded at home for a friend :)

Peach, Plum, Pear

A cover of Joanna Newsom’s The Book Of Right On recorded at home for fun.

The Book Of Right On

When you lose someone, no matter how temporarily, your whole emotional world comes to a standstill, but the outside world goes on. It can be disorienting and confusing and it feels like nothing can set it right until you are reunited. This song was one of the first we started working on after the last record, We’re Trying Our Best, and the longing and loss in it really sets the tone for the whole album. 

I’ve spent some years learning how to wear my heart on my sleeve. I’m fairly certain people think vulnerability is pretty embarrassing these days, but I believe we’re all a little desperate for sincerity in this digital age of impersonal and confrontational connections. I Don’t Know When I’ll See You Again is a longing to hold onto human relationship. It’s a call to hold sacred the practice of saying I love you in the most embarrassing and open ways possible.

I Don't Know When I'll See You Again

On Revenge (and those that seek it): 
It’s hard to feel like you’re the only one searching for the genuine among the accusing masses. The hardest thing to face in conflict is knowing that someone is lying and not knowing who it is. This song is for those without an angle. It’s for those who love the straightforward. 
-Joy

Revenge

Single from our upcoming full length album, Loud Songs for Quiet People, which is going to be released August 25th on Burger Records

Manner of Speaking

Quiety

Cleo

If I Should Die Tonight

White Lies

Five Star Diary

Little Ghost

Five Star Diary is about being loved when you’re at your worst—a truly healing thing.
    I was recently diagnosed with a rare genetic condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Basically my connective tissue is too loose, which causes a huge variety of problems. It means my joints partially dislocate all the time. It means chronic pain. It means that I’m always tired. It means that I haven’t felt good in a very long time.
     Learning to navigate the psychological, emotional and physical toll over the past couple of years has been unbelievably frustrating and difficult.
     Writing about it and fighting to keep doing what I love has been an imperative part of hanging on to joy (both myself and the state of being) in the middle of it all. Knowing that I am loved by loyal and beautiful people regardless of what I can or can’t do keeps me afloat.
      If you ever wake up feeling like a week old salad, this song is for you. You’re not alone! You are worth loving just because you exist! You will always have value. ❤Joy

Combining a deep love of melody with a penchant for noise emanating from suburban garages everywhere, Sweet Nobody writes anthems for the soft-spoken, the unassuming, the overlooked, and the under appreciated. Formed in 2017 and continuing despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Sweet Nobody has managed to release two albums recorded and mixed by LA indie rock wizard Joel Jerome—Loud Songs for Quiet People (2017) and We’re Trying Our Best (2021)—both of which have garnered acclaim and singles featured on tv and radio. 

Their upcoming album, sees them expand on their garagey jangle pop sound to include the New Wave transfiguration of late 50s/early 60s teenage pop, post-punk tones, unabashed 80s radio power pop and it’s heartland rock intersection, the romance of shoegazey dream pop, college rock and those r&b influenced moments of 80s UK indie.

Sweet Nobody

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