Indie-pop trio LANY were launched to fame when their self-titled debut album catapulted them into the public eye and launched their tours of America, Asia, Australia and Europe in 2017. Since then, the band have barely paused to breathe, following up their debut LP with Malibu Nights in 2018, building a social media following of nearly six million, selling over four hundred thousand gig tickets, and clocking up well over three billion streams.

Dispite their wild success, there’s an odd dichotomy at the heart of the band. Their mixture of cool L.A. electro fused with Americana at times feels like two opposing sides of the same coin. Nowhere is this more apparent than on new single Cowboy in LA. Despite the West Coast sound, the band themselves formed in Nashville, while even their name points to twin influences: LANY is an acronym of Los Angeles New York.

It’s a spacey song that embraces LANY’s distinctive vocal sound. Building out from a juddering but soft guitar intro, it features sweet keyboard and guitar flourishes, and the lyrics “And you get up every day and you work hard for your pay / Happy in a pair of jeans / Oklahoma / It made a man out of me”.

Cowboy in LA is the latest single taken from LANY’s upcoming new album Mama’s Boy which is due out on 2 October through Interscope Records. It’s a record that the band’s frontman Paul Jason Klein has suggested will focus on the balance in their origins, and their sense of home, as those lyrics show. In a press release announcing details of Mama’s Boy, he said: “Someone asked me where I was from and somewhere, out of my spirit, I just said ‘Man, I’m from Oklahoma!’ It was a weird sense of pride, to be from the middle of nowhere”.

That press release also points to the new album being “a sweeping tribute to home, heritage and Americana”, and one that features songs that, according to Klein, highlight what’s “symbolic of being an American kid”.

Watch the official lyric video for Cowboy In L.A. here.

Pre-order Mama’s Boy now through LANY’s official website

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.