LAWN SHARE "PRESSURE" SINGLE
Posted on August 27th, 2025
Last month, Lawn announced their fourth LP, God Made The Highway, which is due out September 19th via Exploding In Sound Records. A New Orleans band that revolves around the creative partnership of co-lead singers and songwriters Mac Folger and Rui De Magalhaes, Lawn have seamlessly blended their distinct sensibilities — Folger’s songs are breezy, jangly, and personal while De Magalhaes’ are biting and propulsive post-punk—over three unassailable indie rock full-lengths. It's an idiosyncratic catalog that sets them apart from their contemporaries in both jangle pop and post-punk circles and has made them a fixture in a thriving New Orleans scene, leading to them sharing stages with artists like Momma, Hovvdy and Omni.
The band announced the album with the Folger-led crystalline power pop gem "Davie," and today Lawn are sharing a second preview of the album, a propulsive post-punk track with lead vocals from De Magalhaes called "Pressure."
When De Magalhaes lived in Chicago (he moved back to New Orleans this year), it marked the first time he had been states away from Folger since they formed the band in 2016. “I didn't know how writing new music was going to work out, because Mac and I couldn't practice with the distance between us,” says De Magalhaes. “I put out my solo record as Rui Gabriel and playing guitar was weird because I didn't have Mac as a reference anymore. I leaned on writing very bass-heavy riffs and adding drum machines.” Two ideas required help from Lawn’s drummer Mark Edlin (Hovvdy), and the two hit the studio with engineer Greg Obis (Stuck). When Folger received the demos, he decided to write parts over them. “Rui would text me the voice memo, and I would go into the studio and plug my phone into the PA so it felt like we were in the practice space together,” Folger says. “From there, we just started sending each other voice memos of different song ideas.”
One of those early ideas eventually became single “Pressure,” a tightly-wound dose of nervy riffs anchored by a wobbling bassline. Guitars zigzag around De Magalhaes as he shouts, “Or yet another closing-morning / Turning down a better offer / Just to live on your own petty terms.” It’s kinetic and scathing. “This was the first song where I'd blast the voice memo on the PA and write the guitar parts like that,” says Folger. “I wanted to write with that level of in-the-room energy. I knew if I was going to practice just along to my phone, I wasn't gonna go for the things I normally would.”
De Magalhaes adds:
I wrote the lyrics and bassline to “Pressure” in kind of a drunken stupor back in 2018. I ran into a person whom I went to high school with, who made a condescending comment about the way I was living my life after graduating college: working at a pizza restaurant, playing music, maybe partying a bit much. It really wasn’t that scolding of a statement, but it really stuck in my craw; I spent that night thinking, “who the fuck is this moron in Hokas telling me how to better myself?”. I was seething with a lot of anger at the time, and the song dispatches some of that energy. I find it amusing now, considering that I am now 31, don’t drink, work a pretty vanilla 9-5, have a family, and have been to Cancun at least once. I still don’t think anyone like that is in a position to give advice to people living differently from their idyllic version of a productive life, but I’ve spent enough time with my thoughts to know that songs like these are less about people I dislike and more about my insecurities.
The video is directed by Daniel Lynch / Company Businesses Inc™. He makes these crazy models with Google maps and action figurines and then adds random CGI faces and does facial tracking so the lips sort of move.