Continuing to push beyond the sound established on their breakout debut EP, Toronto indie quintet Next Week’s Washing shares “Clear Eyes,” a massive, dreamy, and cinematic new single that brings alternative rock energy together with densely layered shoegaze. Taken from the band’s forthcoming sophomore EP, Spiral, set for release on November 13th, the track represents their most expansive recording yet, combining walls of textured instrumentation with upfront vocals and a growing confidence in the sound they can distinctly call their own.
“Clear Eyes” was the first song Next Week’s Washing wrote after completing their debut EP. Rather than starting over, the band approached the track as an opportunity to take the foundations they had already established and push them somewhere bigger.
“We wanted to take the sound we had begun to develop with the first six songs and push it forward,” the band explains. “We took a lot more time building layers into the recording, and the result is our biggest (sonically) sounding song yet.”
That progression can be heard throughout the track. While the instrumentation leans heavily into the band’s shoegaze influences, Next Week’s Washing deliberately pushed the vocals forward in the mix, allowing the songwriting to remain present within the song’s towering layers of guitars. The result lands somewhere between the immersive atmosphere of shoegaze and the immediacy of alternative and indie rock, bringing the different sides of the band’s identity into sharper focus.
For Next Week’s Washing, that convergence of influences is precisely what makes “Clear Eyes” significant. Rather than sounding indebted to any single reference point, the band sees the track as one of the clearest representations yet of what their own sound can become.
“It’s probably the truest blend of all our influences that we’ve ever written,” they share. “It feels like something only Next Week’s Washing could’ve written, and we’re proud of that.”
The song’s title arrived only after the music and lyrics were already complete. Fans of the television series Friday Night Lights, the band found themselves returning to Coach Taylor’s recurring mantra, “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” The phrase unexpectedly aligned with the meaning they had already discovered within the song, giving the track its name and adding another layer to its perspective.
“Clear Eyes” describes how it feels to move through life when you’re young and everything is in flux. Sometimes you thrive on the uncertainty and at other times you really want straight answers or a direct path forward. You can get knocked around quite a bit, even when you try to plan ahead or think things through. Ultimately the song is a call to trust your instincts and enjoy the ride – we’re all in it together.
One of the recording’s defining moments emerged just as spontaneously. The song’s breakdown was initially conceived as entirely instrumental, but after hearing the completed arrangement in the studio, the band felt something was missing. They wrote a short poem to test over the section, unsure whether the words would work rhythmically against the music. When Miles stepped up to record it, the experiment immediately clicked.
That instinctive moment reflects the larger evolution behind “Clear Eyes.” As Next Week’s Washing progress into the era of their second EP, the band are becoming increasingly comfortable expanding their arrangements without sacrificing the directness at the heart of their songwriting. The scale may be growing, but their perspective remains grounded in documenting the world as they experience it.
“When we’re writing a song, we like to try and embody the perspective that our generation has on the world,” the band explains. “We feel like it’s part of our duty as we’re coming up with the next generation of great music.”
