Kid Karate aren’t from around here, geographically speaking. The Irish fuzz rockers have spent the last few years building up a substantial local fanbase in their hometown of Dublin. They cut their teeth through extended pub crawls and regional music festivals like Hard Working Class Heroes and Castlepalooza. Churning out walls of scuzzy, electronic-infused music, the duo of singer/guitarist Kevin Breen and drummer Steven Gannon make music that rests somewhere between The White Stripes primal ferocity and the garage-pop melodies of The Black Keys.
But in recent months, they’ve taken their sound to bigger, more globally significant stages, such as South by Southwest and The Great Escape festival. That newfound experience, mixed with ever-shifting musical allegiances, helped inform the recording of the band’s debut EP, Lights Out. Produced by fellow Irish musicians Jason Boland (Kodaline) and Dave Prendergast (Overhead, The Albatross), the EP is due out on July 23rd in North American and Ireland.
For a noisy taste of Lights Out, the band has offered up “Heart”. Combining the dance-rock rhythms of The Rapture with Jack White’s inimitable studio presence (you’ll be shocked as to how similar Breen’s croon is to that of the Third Man head), “Heart” is built brick-by-brick on lightning-fast fretwork and sternum-shattering percussion. The interplay between guitar and drums seems to exponentially tighten as the songs wears on, feeling like fingers closing into a fist. And that fist is likely to smash right through your ear canal into your medulla oblongata. Listen in below.