I get sick and tired of dreaming, voices in my head repeating
It’s a habit
You talk for hours
It’s a habit
Since their first apparition with OMEN, the UK’s debdepan have treated genre as raw material rather than rulebook. The Margate duo (Chelsea and Grace) return with Lovers & Others this November, preceded by Habit, a single that gnaws at the idea of affection as performance, desire as theatre, and intimacy as compulsion.
Habit sketches a world of late nights and long walks, of intoxication cut with introspection, where sadness wears sequins and the dancefloor doubles as diary. The band call it “pretty sad girl but also kind of party,” a phrase that reads like a shrug, but in practice signals a refusal of tidy binaries.
The track, as a result, feels like a tug-of-war between steel and silk. Industrial abrasion collides with Electroclash’s decadent pulse, while vocals hang suspended in that space between whispered invitation and private confession. It lands somewhere in the ether between Ladytron, Franz Ferdinand, and The Editors. “If being more enigmatic makes you happy, fucking tragic” is the song’s shiv, delivered with poised venom, looping until the words themselves start to feel like obsessive thought patterns eating their way into the cortex.
“This song is about feeling like you’re not good enough for someone and having to play it cool to win their affection,” they explain. “We wanted it to feel quite repetitive to signify how my thoughts kept circling. ‘You talk for hours’ is actually about the thoughts in my own brain.”
Such intent is translated into form with ruthless efficiency. The arrangement circles itself, a locked groove that threatens to collapse under its own weight, yet is propelled forward by a rhythm that insists on movement. What began as the husk of a breakup lament took shape in Portugal during an artistic residency at Westway Lab, where a collaboration with Phaser provided the missing heartbeat. That insistent, unyielding beat reframes the lyric’s unease.
Directed by Martin Perry and featuring debdepan alongside Patricia Langa and Michael Lewis, the video leans into the song’s eerie sleaze with relish. It casts the band in a dim, smoke-choked club, their presence set against mannequin-like figures clinging to a defunct order. The clash of generations is masked by oversized smiley faces, while the bassline, thick, unrepentant, and combustible, underscores the farce.
Watch the video for “Habit” below:
Formed in 2022, debdepan have already lived through a rapid ascent: Darkest Hour’s breakthrough, slots alongside Cumgirl8 and Miki Berenyi, a UK tour with Pete Doherty, recognition across the BBC airwaves, and footholds in Europe’s alternative charts.
Recording in Ramsgate with Mike Collins, later polished at London’s Strongroom by James Minas, debdepan use the studio less as a sanctuary than as a pressure chamber. Out of it emerges a work that holds tension in every measure: restraint versus release, glamour versus abrasion, self-doubt versus sheer presence.
Released August 28 via Silent Kid Records, the single frames Lovers & Others as a document of contradictions: affection and futility, solitude and communion, the ache of the body against the cruelty of the mind. Habit suggests that what once looked like momentum is, in fact, just ignition.
Listen to Habit below and order the single here.
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