Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up-and-coming, well established or hidden gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.
To date, there have been 75 New Music Monday features published through this collaboration.
This week, Dead Summer is the New Music Monday highlight!
Dead Summer are a modern rock duo featuring Michael Wilford on drums and Nate Prevedoros on bass and vocals.
Both have been playing in various Victoria bands for years, but decided to collaborate while seeking to start something new.
“We were both kind of looking for a new project, like a new creative outlet, and we floated the idea by each other,” Prevedoros told Victoria Buzz.
“We are both fans of Royal Blood, I’m a big Death From Above guy and the idea of just playing in a two-piece band was appealing.”
Prevedoros says that he typically plays guitar but really wanted to pick up a bass for this project as a way of taking a new approach to creating sound.
Together, they wrote songs for around a year and Wilford says that something no one will tell you is how difficult it is to play in a two-piece band.
“We realized really quickly that if I make a mistake, that’s half the band that just made a mistake,” said Wilford.
“The other thing too is writing songs—I play in all kinds of bands and some of those have six members and you don’t have to write the killer bass line all the time because it can be the guitar player’s job to make this song work—when there’s just two of you, you have to do the melody and the bass line and all of that yourself.”
Then, after a year of developing their songs together, Dead Summer got their first gig in October 2024.
“We didn’t even have a name,” laughed Prevedoros, “but some friends of ours in Cold Fame asked us to play a show with them at Capital Ballroom.”
“It was this mad dash, like, we have a month-and-a-half—we need a name, we need promo photos, we need to put together our show.”
The name they landed with, Dead Summer, is actually a subtle reference to their shared love of fantasy.
“We are both huge fantasy nerds,” explained Wilford.
“Nate plays a lot of D&D and I’m a big Lord of the Rings guy, and so within our branding and our design choices, we use a lot of heraldic imagery and we try to nod to that world a little bit while also having that rock band branding.”
Now, just over two years after starting this project and beginning to write together, Dead Summer has released their first single off their upcoming debut EP.
Highlight Track – “Take it or Leave it”
“Take it or Leave it” is the first single to be released from Dead Summer’s upcoming EP release, and just happens to be one of the first songs the duo ever wrote together.
Wilford says that when he and Prevedoros started jamming together, this was the first song that clicked while they were trying to figure out which direction to take with their music.
“It was for that reason we wanted this to be the lead-off to the EP,” he said. It was like the guiding star for a little bit.”
He added that this is the song that the band has been opening all of their shows with, so it just naturally felt like a good single to release as a taste of what is to come.
“Lyrically, it’s about a relationship and being strung along and kind of coming to a decision that this person has to decide what they want—they have to take it or leave it,” explained Wilford.
“I think everyone has been in a relationship at some point where you’re getting mixed signals and it feels like it’s come to a breaking point of sorts and an ultimatum needs to be issued,” added Prevedoros.
“It is a very simple concept of a song, but it’s about having vulnerable lyrics overtop of really punchy instrumentals, and I think they work together well.”
Prevedoros also noted that this song isn’t about any particular relationship, but likes to believe it can be applied to any type of relationship, be it romantic or just a friendship.
Musically, both Wilford and Prevedoros say that they are really proud of how the bridge of the song came together on the recording.
“It’s like this big jam—we get to do what I always love to watch two-piece bands do,” said Prevedoros.
“We just get to lock in and really get in-sync, and really play our instruments together.”
Check out “Take it or Leave it” by Dead Summer below:
To listen to “Take it or Leave it” and the rest of Dead Summer’s releases, check them out on Bandcamp, Tidal, Spotify and Apple Music.
Though they do not have a firm date on their upcoming EP release, the band says their debut EP will be released sometime in late summer.
Coming up soon, Dead Summer has a show booked at The Globe Live Studio in Nanaimo on Thursday, April 30th alongside Cold Fame, who they played their first-ever show with.
Though they do not have any shows firmly booked in Victoria at the moment, Dead Summer says they will have some announcements coming soon.
To stay in the loop with future shows and releases, follow Dead Summer on Instagram.
Related:
- New Music Monday: The Projectors release music video for single off new album
- New Music Monday: Conjure Hand explores funk-rock direction on two new singles
- New Music Monday: Standard Issue Pleasure Model releases dynamic new album ‘Tripsitter’
CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.
“I love CFUV, you can plaster that wherever you like,” said Prevedoros.
“College radios aren’t always the first thing that everybody thinks of, but I think they are really important. Like, when I was in high school, my first band was getting played on CFUV—it’s a really incredible platform to be able to get yourself out there.”
“They really prop up the community and that’s so valuable and so unheralded,” added Wilford. “It’s really worth investing into and paying attention to.”
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of Dead Summer in the comments below!
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