Hand Habits Shares Two New Singles Jasmine Blossoms And Dead Rat
Tuesday, 08 July 2025
Written by Jon Stickler
Photo: Jacob Boll
Hand Habits, the project of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Meg Duffy, has shared two new songs.
Jasmine Blossoms and Dead Rat will feature on Duffy's new album, 'Blue Reminder', due out on August 22 via Fat Possum.
The former is an intimate and atmospheric offering that blends indie-rock with subdued, emotional vocals, while the latter is another emotionally loaded track with soft guitar and vocals. Head below to view the video for Jasmine Blossoms, created by frequent collaborator Otium. Duffy said:
"This song really conjures for me the room and the time that I wrote it in—I was living in Mount Washington in LA, which is just such a beautiful, lush neighbourhood. And there were (and are) these sort of unthinkable contradictions, between the beauty of the flowers and the trees and the birds around me, and then just being blasted with so much horrifying information and footage of war, death, and greed on the news and social media. This song is definitely not an answer to how to integrate those things, but I just wanted to try to sort of depict that experience, that one reality doesn’t negate the other.
"I come from a family where we don't typically talk about the tragic or dysfunctional, which I think partly led to me being a songwriter who talks about pain and grief a lot, and at the same time, to being a person who tries to cultivate some joy, while everything falls apart."
Commenting on Dead Rat, she explained: "There was an actual dead rat rotting in my wall. It was disgusting and I was living with the smell and couldn't get to it, so there was truly nothing I could do but wait it out. It just became this metaphor for me on a number of levels:
"There are definitely things that I’ve done or been through that a part of me would rather put behind the wall and never think about again… but that’s not the way the psyche or healing works, and things will find their way out, whether it's through a wretched smell or through acceptance or an open window, or all three."
Duffy previously teased 'Blue Reminder' with the lead single, Wheel Of Change, which arrived in June along with initial details of the record.
Hand Habits will tour Europe and the UK supporting Perfume Genius in the autumn, following a headline North American tour, and gigs opening for Yeah Yeah Yeahs on July 9 and Japanese Breakfast on August 21. Head here for details.
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