Upcoming Releases

fish narc (the musical moniker of Olympia, WA-based songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Ben Funkhouser) has returned with the announcement of his new album, Uncle, due out October 16th via the legendary K Records. 

Uncle arrives barely a year after fish narc's 2025 album, frog song, which drew acclaim for fully embracing the guitar-led influences that have always been a part of Funkhouser's genre-hopping songwriting. Uncle picks up that creative momentum and runs with it. Funkhouser teamed with producer/engineer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, Archers of Loaf, Fiddlehead) and leaned even further on the evergreen sounds '80s and '90s alternative rock, making not only the best fish narc album to date, but one of the most satisfying rock albums of the year. 

To celebrate the announcement fish narc has shared Uncle's lead single "Much Less Me" a driving cut of crunchy college rock that strikes an appealing balance between early solo career Paul Westerberg and classic jangly UK indie. 

Funkhouser has had a long and highly unique career as fish narc. He got his start in the 2010s by bringing a Pacific Northwest DIY punk mentality to the burgeoning soundcloud rap scene, and his work with ThraxxHouse and GothBoiClique helped define that era of music. But after spending his 20s on the cutting edge of music, Funkhouser found writing straight ahead guitar rock in his 30s to be unexpectedly engaging. “I spent all that time working on a new sub-genre, and now I kind of just want to write songs that really feel comfortable and make sense to me," he explains. "Going into writing Uncle I felt like I’d finally unlocked something, like I didn’t need to prove anything anymore. I just wanted to push that as far as I could–go full rocker.”

Captured with Farrar's timeless and unfussy production, Uncle is the kind of music that's made with such craft and precision that it just sounds effortlessly right. And Funkhouser's desire to just make music on that more instinctual level also comes through in the record's lyrics. “The title, saying ‘uncle,’ giving up–that’s sort of a tongue in cheek thing I wanted to acknowledge,” he says. “The record is about reflecting on the last ten years, coping with expectations, dealing with aging. You kind of blink and wake up, and you’re in your mid 30s. I understand that young people have this imperative to express themselves and that plays into how a young person's music hits–I'm not in that lane anymore and I'm not trying to be. This is more just about me trying to give something my best shot.”

Uncle track listing:

1. Untitled
2. Much Less Me
3. Emma
4. Student Driver
5. One Hand On The Sword
6. In The Woods
7. Big Dumb World
8. Not To Guess
9. Wouldn’t You Know
10. Umtanum
11. Yakima Canyon