The Buddyrevelles are a Chicago-based indie rock trio formed in 1996 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, consisting of Aaron Grant on guitars and lead vocals, Scott Hoch on bass and background vocals, and Dan Reinholdt on drums. Their debut album September, November, released in 1998 on Motorcoat Records after the band relocated to Chicago, earned a 9.1 from Pitchfork, who described the sound as sitting somewhere between Chicago post-rock, the best Galaxie 500 material, and the hope of a better future. Their second album American Matador followed in 2000 to another strong Pitchfork review, and Don’t Quit arrived in 2007 on Chicago’s Solitaire Records. After years away from releasing new material, the band returned in 2025 with the four-song EP The Concession, signaling they had no intention of staying quiet. Anything for Abbey, released May 8, 2026, is their first standalone single of the new year and arrives with the kind of weight that only comes from a band that has been sitting on something long enough to know it is worth saying.

Anything for Abbey

The cover art tells you something before the song even starts. A wrecked car, crumpled and still, sitting in the kind of silence that follows something irreversible. It is not decorative. Whatever Abbey means to the Buddyrevelles, this song is not a casual dedication. At four minutes and nineteen seconds it takes exactly the time it needs, opening with the melodic layered guitars that have been the band’s signature since September, November, the tone warm but carrying an undercurrent of tension that never fully releases.

Grant’s vocal sits close in the mix, and the delivery has the quiet urgency of someone who has rehearsed these words in their head many times before finally saying them out loud. Hoch’s bass drives the track with a controlled insistence underneath everything, and Reinholdt’s drumming is propulsive without ever crowding the emotional space the song needs to breathe. The Buddyrevelles have always understood that indie rock hits hardest when it trusts its own restraint, and this single is a reminder of exactly why that approach works. It builds without announcing itself, arrives somewhere that feels both earned and unexpected, and then sits with you after it ends in a way that most four-minute songs do not manage to do.

Final Thoughts

Anything for Abbey is the sound of a band that never lost what made them worth paying attention to in the first place. Nearly three decades into their existence The Buddyrevelles are still writing songs that feel genuinely urgent rather than comfortable, still trusting the listener to meet them where the music goes rather than explaining where that is. If this single is a signal of where the next chapter is headed, it is a very good signal. Welcome back.

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