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With ‘Growing Underground’, iconic queercore pioneers Team Dresch have shared another track and video from Furthermore, their first album in thirty years, out September 18, 2026 on Jealous Butcher Records. Following album announce single ‘One Song’, ‘Growing Underground’ is an anthemic call to continued resistance, a call to collective, intersectional values and a vision for a future free of hegemonic, hateful systems. The track is accompanied by a stunning shadow puppet video filled with references to meaningful historical places and things, created by Jason Thibodeaux (Coraline, ParaNorman), Cynthia Star (Coraline, ParaNorman), Ponyboy and Team Dresch’s own Kaia Wilson.
‘Growing Underground’ begins with a moody vibe and spellbinding bass line before transforming into a fiery distorted scream of sound which dissolves and then builds to the tsunami-like force of the chorus. The song’s final crescendo is a whirlwind of frenzied, chaotic guitars, heartbeat drums, grounding bass and plaintively delivered vocals.
“Boiled down to its core, ‘Growing Underground’ imagines a future rooted not in fear, but in love,” Team Dresch explain. “It’s a place of germination. It’s the root system. The mycelial network. The place where growth begins long before anyone above the surface realizes it’s happening. The music mirrors the song’s message: the Right can try to erase us, but it will never extinguish the people who believe in the inviolability of all life and our planet. The closing images become increasingly expansive: ‘We become the ocean / We become trees’ - these aren’t simply symbols of survival, they’re ecosystems. Trees provide shelter. Oceans sustain life. The song imagines shared communities becoming the very thing that nutures future life. Love is embodied through chosen families, interconnection, and the networks that have always sustained one another.”
Originally formed in 1993 in Portland, Oregon, back when it was still an under-the-radar postindustrial midsized city, where an artist could still live in a punk house for $200 a month—maybe less if you claimed a closet as your room—Jody Bleyle lived in one such house in SE Portland where she hosted the band’s earliest practices, with Kaia Wilson on guitar and vocals, Donna Dresch on guitar and bass, and Jody on vocals and drums. Before long, Jody moved over to guitar and bass as well, and the band found a kindred queer spirit in drummer Marcéo Martinez, who played on the band’s first full-length release, Personal Best (1995). Marcéo took a break from the band for their 1996 second album, Captain My Captain, which featured east-coast hard-hitter Melissa York on drums. Today, the band is a power 5-piece with both Marcéo and Melissa in their respective drummer’s seats.
