Crate: Diaristic Bittersweet Rock on the Good English Debut

It is not easy for a new band to build a real buzz on the strength of a single song, but that is exactly what Brooklyn four-piece Crate did. Their debut single "Julia," quietly self-released in February 2024, was a blissed-out guitar spiral that Stereogum called the best shoegaze song of the year by a band with only one song. Now, after three years of writing and recording in pieces, Crate are finally ready to show the whole picture. Their self-titled debut album arrives November 13, 2026 via NY/Nashville indie label Good English Records, on digital, CD, and vinyl.

Crate is Cody Hudgins, Ezra Engler, Henry Smith, and Juan Angulo. The record was built in pieces and on borrowed time: guitar and vocal tracking in Brooklyn apartments and practice spaces, with the bulk of it coming together at Ethan Williams of Shower Curtain's studio in Queens. Hudgins produced and mixed alongside TJ Freda of Gift, and he and Engler trade off songwriting duties across a shared, diaristic lyrical world.

That word, diaristic, is the key to the record. The eleven tracks capture relationships that end before they start, the cycles people cannot break out of, and the disorientation of hearing yourself become someone new. Lead preview "Not My Song (Mine to Keep)" slides from anxious confession into aching regret before settling into something slower and softer than where it started. Hudgins says the chorus is about the anxiety he gets every time he smokes weed, while the verse reaches back to a relationship from before he moved to New York, and the helplessness of loving someone so much while realizing you may not be able to help them.

What they sound like: a hazy, unhurried strain of guitar rock indebted to the noisier corners of My Bloody Valentine and the quieter corners of American Analog Set, Acetone, and Duster. Songs are allowed to breathe rather than rushing to resolve.

Crate are entrenched in Brooklyn's DIY scene, having played shows around town alongside Starcleaner Reunion, Shower Curtain, and bloodsports. This spring, Nothing tapped them to play the Slide Away Festival in Chicago with Hum and Chapterhouse. More shows will be announced soon.

Listen

Start here

• "Julia" (2024): the debut single that started it all, a blissed-out guitar spiral.
• "Necklace" (2025): moves from acoustic lo-fi-pop hush into a distorted haze of fuzz, about being stuck in loops and trying to break free.
• "Not My Song (Mine to Keep)": the album preview, and Hudgins' own favorite song on the record.

Then preorder the full album, out November 13, 2026.

Where to follow

• Bandcamp: cratecr8.bandcamp.com
• Instagram: @crate.nyc
• Preorder the album: Crate on Bandcamp