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We are psyched to premiere the video for “Convent Walls,” the final single from Los Angeles indie rock quartet The Pretty Flowers before the release of their highly anticipated third album, Never Felt Bitter, arriving March 27, 2026 via Forge Again Records (pre-order). Watch the video below.

“Convent Walls” offers a final glimpse into the band’s evolving sound, which is shaped by years of relentless touring, a deep sense of camaraderie, and a shared instinct for balancing raw energy with sharp, melodic songwriting. As the last preview before the full record drops, the single captures the urgency and emotional immediacy that define the album as a whole.

Formed in 2013 in Los Angeles by songwriter Noah Green, The Pretty Flowers solidified their lineup in 2018 with Green (vocals, guitar), Sam Tiger (bass, backing vocals), Jake Gideon (guitar, backing vocals), and Sean Johnson (drums, percussion). Their previous albums (2018’s Why Trains Crash and 2023’s A Company Sleeve) established them as a standout force in modern indie rock known for their driving, all-killer/no-filler approach.

The new album was written against a backdrop of turbulence in their hometown, and that tension permeates the music. From the election to the fires to the ICE raids, stability in Los Angeles and beyond had never seemed less certain. “There’s a sense of urgency, fear and confusion that comes across in these new songs,” says Johnson. “If anything, it’s the most present we’ve ever been.” That immediacy is matched by a collaborative spirit, with Tiger noting, “Never Felt Bitter is an album only the four of us together could make.”

PRT: We’re stoked to be premiering your new single “Convent Walls,” the last preview before the album drops. What’s the story behind this one?

Thanks for premiering it! We are equally stoked. “Convent Walls”  is a song about a few things, but mostly it's about finding freedom from the constraints of capitalism and religion through music or through other personal creative endeavors. 

To accompany the track, there’s a video that was directed by The Pretty Flowers drummer Sean Johnson. He provided some context to the video’s story by writing: The video is meant to be a love letter to Los Angeles and to the venues that helped cultivate the music scenes we have been a part of and where we all met. Sadly, many of these venues do not exist anymore, which I feel adds a level of weight that also taps into the concepts in the lyrics. By having it be from the point of view of a moving car, I wanted to convey the incessant movement and constant motion that is part of the musician's experience. 

PRT: How do you feel ‘Convent Walls’ fits in with the rest of the record?

We chose this track as the third single mostly to give people an idea of the variety of songs on the album. This one is a rock song for sure, but it also stands out as being more unabashedly pop than most of the other album tracks. I think that pop sound is encouraged by Joy Deyo from Long Beach band Sweet Nobody, who sang backup vocals on it and who has one of my favorite voices around. The song has a lot of interesting textures going on in it that are unique to this specific track, like the tremolo effect on my vocals in one section and there’s a shimmery, hall-of-mirrors sounding thing going on with Joy’s vocals in another part. The long drum fill outro is really inspired and I love it.  

PRT: Between day jobs, relationships, and everything else life throws at you, how do you find the time (and energy) to keep the band going?

It's not particularly easy to be in a band, but I don’t think it’s ever been the case that it’s an easy thing. Being able to have our third album completed and have it stand as an amalgamation of all the work we put into it and have it sound the way we wanted it to is a very rewarding thing for us. We are not a career-focused band, we do it because we love making music together and get to do it on our own terms. This has never been a band with lofty goals and plans, it's really always been about existing to make the kind of music that we feel like making and to let people discover it and find us however and whenever they do. We’re very DIY-oriented and have never received much outside help from anyone, in terms of bookers in our hometown or ever feeling like we were part of a scene. Not having those things at our disposal does mean more work for us, but it’s just kinda how it is. On the other hand we also have great, creative friends and partners in our circle that we rely on. We all kinda do what we can with the band outside of our work, school and family obligations.

PRT: This is your first release with Forge Again Records. How did that come together?

For a few different reasons we didn't feel like this album was going to be a good fit for our previous label. We decided to send some of the rough mixes we had to a few labels that seemed like they’d be a better fit, to see who was interested in putting it out. We were operating on the assumption that we would ultimately wind up self-releasing the album. I knew Justin from Forge Again a little bit from a punk message board and reached out to him at the beginning of last summer. I knew he liked our first two albums quite a bit and I had really liked the vinyl reissues he had recently put out for Chicago bands Triplefastaction and Fig Dish. I sent him the rough mixes of 8 or so songs with the truthful caveat that we were probably just going to wind up self-releasing, but if he was interested in putting it out we could talk about it. He got back to us after a weekend of listening and said he was interested in releasing it on the label. And here we are. It’s cool for us to be a California band on a mostly midwestern label and that there are a bunch of active and semi-active Forge Again artists that we would like to play shows with. Justin has been great to work with on this record for all the stuff that comes along with an album post-mixing. His recommendations for mastering (Carl Saff) and pressing plant (Smashed Plastic), and printing (Imprint) were all excellent. We’re very happy this album ended up landing with Forge Again.

PRT: What do you feel has been the biggest evolution for The Pretty Flowers between ‘Why Trains Crash’ and ‘Never Felt Bitter’?

I think we learned how to be a better band and collaborate more authentically. The songs have definitely gotten better and more dynamic through our three albums, and that's a result of playing and working together so closely. The songs on the first record, when the band was Sam, Eli and me, were mostly conceived to be played as a trio, but I feel like we were always meant to be a four-piece band and that we got to that point pretty quickly, with Jake joining the lineup during the recording of ‘Why Trains Crash,’ and Sean joining the band, replacing Eli, a little before that first album was released. I know that our musical palette has expanded a lot since then, too. With this collection of songs on ‘Never Felt Bitter,’ I’m confident in saying they are the best we’ve ever done. I remember when we finished ‘A Company Sleeve’ I felt like, if this is the last album we make I’d be happy with that, but I’m very glad we got to make this record, because this is actually the one. 

PRT: And finally, what do you hope people take away from the new album?

I really just hope that the album is somehow able to make its way through the muck of what we’re all currently living through, to reach people wherever they’re at. It would be great if this album winds up connecting with people and becomes an album they want to return to. Ultimately, it would be cool if listeners take away with them the hopefulness that we’ve tried to allow to come through in the songs, over the cynicism and anxieties that are also running though the album.