Fresh off of releasing their Grand Jury debut, dog eyes are back today to lend a hand in celebrating our 10th year in business. Back in May, we unveiled Samia’s take on the Twin Peaks barnburner “Making Breakfast,” a touchstone track from their 2014 album Wild Onion. Today, dog eyes spin their own version of “Joy,” a beautiful & gentle moment from the 2021 Hovvdy album True Love.

The track is the second in our 10th Anniversary project, where we’ve asked a handful of our bands, old and new, to tackle songs from the catalog. We’ll be back before the end of the year with tunes from TOLEDO, Haulm, & Jordana.

In the meantime, you can grab a 10th Anniversary limited edition tee over on our Bandcamp, designed by longtime GJ friend Vance Wellenstein.

Today marks the release of holy friend, the latest full-length from Oakland duo dog eyes. It’s a project that overflows with warmth and compassion. Mini-epics of lo-fi bedroom pop ambition, sleepy Americana and studies in slowcore abound across the ten tracks here. The band celebrated earlier this week with the release of a music video for final single, “drive,” a hushed indie folk number that arrives early on the album. A hometown East Bay Express profile landed earlier this week ahead of last night’s release show at Bottom of the Hill in SF.

Join us in welcoming this wonderful record into the world.

01 crush
02 firsts
03 rusty, my dog
04 drive
05 fair
06 moment
07 nothing at all
08 go together
09 ties
10 holy friend
[GET CASSETTE]

dog eyes, the lo-fi Oakland duo of Davis Leach and Haily Firstman, want to talk about friendship. 

holy friend, the pair’s sophomore release – announced today & their first for Grand Jury Music– is a gentle 10-song ode to all types of relationships, an examination of the effect we have on the most important people in our lives.  It’s a cornucopia of hushed & humble mini-epics. Across the record, there’s ethereal twee on “fair,” patient slowcore on “rusty, my dog,”  mossy indie folk on “drive”  and economical bedroom pop on “moment,” available everywhere today. 

As Firstman puts it, “the ‘Holy Friend’ as a concept, creates an ideal person from scraps of perfection/the divine we find in flawed places. Hopeful, yet grounded, the “Holy Friend” is a testament to the idea that age brings nuance. Something bigger than the sum of its parts that helps guide us, rooted and reflected in the nuance of friendship.”

The band wasn’t nearly as conceptual with their debut, good, proper send off, which they self-released in 2022. “Our vision for ‘good, proper sendoff’ was a lot more pared down and simple,” says Leach. Where good proper send off was a record filled with field recordings, fuzzy radio static and fragile folk, holy friend levels up the ambition and expands the sonic horizons. On August 16th, Grand Jury will release that document, a limited edition cassette featuring holy friend on the A-side and good, proper send off on the B-side.

01 crush
02 firsts
03 rusty, my dog
04 drive
05 fair
06 moment
07 nothing at all
08 go together
09 ties
10 holy friend
[PRE-ORDER CASSETTE]

dog eyes are back today with a new single, “rusty, my dog.”

It’s a daydream-y slowcore song that calmly floats on a gentle breeze. “Matching the minimalist bedroom pop and unexpected existentialism of Hovvdy’s early work with the surreal tinge of @, the track is another promising indication of what dog eyes’ Grand Jury debut will have in store,” said FLOOD Mag in their premiere this morning.

The duo sums up the single as “a grumbling, slow-and-steady meditation about Martin, our favorite dog. While light-hearted and sweet, it sends us off with chilling mantras like: ‘I don’t exist outside of his big ears,’ and ‘I’m not whole when you’re not around.’”.

The song follows “fair,” which was paired with our signing announcement last month via Paste Magazine , who praised it for being “a green-as-grass folk track with cosmic vocal harmonies that sound like acid-covered flannel shirts come alive.”

Both songs are from a larger project that will be announced soon. In other news, the band just announced an upcoming show at San Francisco’s Bottom of the Hill on August 15th. Tickets available here.

We try to listen to every demo submission we ever get. But over the past ten years, we’ve never signed a band out of the info@grandjurymusic.com pile. Until now.

Today we couldn’t be happier that we opened the email from Oakland’s dog eyes – the lo-fi duo of Davis Leach and Hailey Firstman. Their first Grand Jury single, which follows their 2022 debut album a good proper send off, is the playfully off-kilter “fair.” It’s anchored by a hooky bassline and a warbly acoustic guitar jangle in the verses, but kicks into a beautiful second gear with choruses of ethereal twee that find the middle ground between K Records and Slumberland, coordinates on the musical map we’d never really thought to visit before.

Paste premiered the song & video above this morning, calling the song “a green-as-grass folk track with cosmic vocal harmonies that sound like acid-covered flannel shirts come alive. It’s a truly delightful sound to behold, as dog eyes reckon with a relationships and friendships now-separated but, in the eyes of hope, never fully surrendered.”

We’ll have plenty more from dog eyes soon. For now, enjoy!