AITIS BAND are excited to share their new single “He’s Great” along with its accompanying music video, directed by experimental animator Exyl Space. The track is the latest pre-release single from the band’s forthcoming fourth full-length, AITIS BAND – IV, out October 10 on Ernest Jenning Record Co. The album was produced by former bandmate Nate Kinsella, who also mixed AITIS BAND III as well as Joan of Arc’s 1984 and Tim Melina Theo Bobby.
Speaking about the song, the band says:
“Wait, you don’t apologize to your diary? Or scribble things like, ‘Oh, I’m swooning,’ while assuring the pages they would too if they knew this guy? AITIS BAND takes an adolescent crush play-by-play and makes it sound cool—while the fake guitar repeats ‘He’s Great’ until you believe it. Exyl Space created the video for us at the Oxbow Artist Residency, depicting a delirious hang in the woods by flashlight. Exactly how kids from Heath, Massachusetts like to party.”
Formed by former Joan of Arc members Bobby Burg (Love of Everything) and Melina Ausikaitis, and joined by visual artist/musician Ray Borchers, AITIS BAND have carved out a singular space since their formation in 2019. They mix the theatrical with the absurd, fusing haunted house atmospherics with deadpan humor. Their lyric-driven songs literally report what “she said” — and how terrifying it was.
Their music channels club culture, teen melodrama, and tragic figures both real and imagined, veering from tender ballads to noisy anthems. They dwell in a liminal space between too much art school and just enough ’80s night. Ausikaitis’ vocals sink into a funereal bath that Burg and Borchers slowly bring to a boil.
AITIS BAND’s setup is as unconventional as their sound: dueling Roland EG101 drum machines/keyboards and a MicroKorg. Ray controls three keyboards at once using weights for drones, while playing additional notes by hand and foot. Melina sings and plays a stringless guitar rigged with a contact mic and EarthQuaker Devices pedals. Bobby plays bass.
