Soft and Dumb is an indie anxiety rock duo comprised of Elena Buenrostro and Travis Newgren: two quasi-Chicagoans who met at college in Urbana, Illinois. The band combines love for dissonance and noise to create distinct panic-fueled songs on their new EP. Written and recorded entirely during quarantine, “Out of Bed” reflects not only the collective stress of life in the wake of a pandemic, but individual worries like familial trauma, performance anxiety, and entomophobia. In writing, they attach these fears to concrete instances of assholes (like wasps and playground bullies).

With a bassist for a father, Elena grew up in a household where gigging and cluttered music equipment were the norm. On the other hand, Travis didn’t know who Sonic Youth was until 2019. But the two come together to pull music out of each other in a quarantined creative space, each playing every instrument at some point in the project. Some of the songs are just arguments, but on occasion, the two channel the distress away from each other and recall some bad moral actor from childhood. Beaming, Soft and Dumb holds up a middle school lens to their early 20s, noting the stark lack of difference.