Folded arms to rest drinking tea and farmer’s mist
Away away don’t crawl away derelict summer and spaces kissed
Sew down the spring with needles and grins
Slip slip and quietly slip through cracks in all our limbs
The House Flies make music for rooms where the wallpaper has started to peel, and nobody has bothered to ask what is growing underneath. On Derelict Crawl, the Moline, Illinois quartet drags post-punk through damp timber, rural vacancy, and a low electrical hum, then lets the guitars swell until the song feels too large for the walls holding it. There is familiar DNA in their sound: The Cure’s spacious ache, Joy Division’s repetition, Bauhaus at their most severe – but the band keeps grinding those references into something rougher and more physical.
Alex Riggen’s vocal delivery carries a tired, almost narcotized calm while Burnie Eckhardt’s guitar pushes against him in broad, abrasive layers. Ozzie Woods and Nick Pompou hold the center with a rhythm section that understands the usefulness of restraint; the song keeps moving without rushing toward payoff, allowing repetition to become pressure. By the time the refrain returns again, alienation has become less an idea than a condition of the body.
That approach suits lyrics full of skin, boiled leather, curled material, needles, tea, bone, and limbs splitting open at the seams. Domestic life gets strange fast, with ordinary objects contaminated by private meaning, as though somebody stayed awake too long in an old farmhouse and began assigning motives to everything in the kitchen. The recurring disconnection gives the song its ugly little heartbeat: people trying to remain near each other while every image suggests contraction, damage, or escape.
“‘We kept coming back to this one as the first song to release and show a glimpse into the new album,” says vocalist and guitarist Alex Riggen. “It has some of the record’s weight and repetition without giving away too much of what comes later.”
The video keeps the mystery intact, placing the band in silhouette while strange superimposed forms slide across the frame. Its near-psychedelic treatment suits a song already interested in warped perception, repetition, and bodies becoming unfamiliar to themselves.
“Derelict Crawl works more through images and repetition than a clear narrative, and we like leaving room for people to decide what it means to them. ‘We don’t belong’ is probably as close as the song gets to giving away its center. We approached the video the same way. It creates its own strange little environment without trying to explain the lyrics.”
Watch the video for Derelict Crawl below:
As the first glimpse of the seven-track Lions and Ore, due November 6, Derelict Crawl suggests The House Flies have learned how much menace can live inside patience. The band stretches its post-punk foundation toward shoegaze weight and gothic rock austerity, leaving enough empty space for every guitar surge to feel earned. Those hundred black vinyl copies may end up carrying one impressively diseased little document of Midwestern isolation.
Pre-order the album here.
On Friday, November 6, 2026, the band will celebrate the album release at Raccoon Motel, Davenport, IA, with King of the Weirdos, Company Dimes, and Half Loves.
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The post “Leather Stains the Bone” — Illinois Post-Punk Quartet The House Flies Share Video for “Derelict Crawl” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
