America’s Sweetheart are Garden State musical treasures, creating wonderfully vibrant sonic ear candy for Indie Nation.The female-fronted, Jersey City based indie-pop band’s promising path was recently halted by terminal illness after finishing recording their upcoming full length LP. But founding member Valerie “Val” Germain, singer and guitarist of America’s Sweetheart, refused to lie down after her diagnosis with a very rare cancer. She kept recording through her treatment and left her musical sister, the band’s co-founder, vocalist and bassist Anastasia “Stace” Kinsella, a parting wish: “Finish the album.” In early 2024, Stace and her co-writer, the legendary NYC based producer Godfrey Diamond (Lou Reed, Etta James, Frank Sinatra), crowdsourced the funds needed to return to the studio and face the music. After completing the band’s third album, One of A Kind, they have now delivered to fans its first of three upcoming video clips, “Reject Beach.”
A standout track on the new album, “Reject Beach” captures the liberation of shedding your woes along with your clothes for moonlit skinny-dipping after too many hours of low-wage work. The dreamy feel of its verses transports the listener into the ocean, rocked by the waves until an infectious, fast-moving bassline brings varying choruses of reassurance and wordless relief. Finally, “Reject Beach” bursts into full throttle, asserting autonomy through hard-driving guitars and rebellious words. It expresses the defiant spirit that drove the band from the beginning, the urge to do your own thing despite it all. “Val and I grew up together in this band. She loved writing songs with me and she loved America’s Sweetheart, so she was like, “Let’s play.” Nothing would have happened without that,” Stace says. “There’s a big deafening space left by her.”
The “Reject Beach” video invites viewers inside that sisterhood – backstage and behind the scenes to the fun, humor, passion, and chaos of America’s Sweetheart. Framed as a series of footage from the band’s gigging days in and around New York City, the flickering, muted cinema verite images bring the viewer into the magical orbit of these merry music makers on stage and on the road. But these indelible images are more than that. They serve as a touching tribute to the band’s deeply cherished singer, guitarist and friend – a last exuberant blast from a truly American band bursting with life.
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