Bio
Photo by Andrew Caplan
After two full length projects and their aptly titled 2025 EP, New Pop Experiments Vol. 1, Austin’s Stalefish proves they’re an endlessly kinetic force who only continues to evolve the longer they create together. The six-piece comprised of principal songwriters Dalton Hausman, Jake Magee, and Sam Franklin, alongside bandmates Avery Delost, Jonathen Pedraza, and Jonathan Cazares are back to share their latest, Bueno (arriving October 9th, 2026), the group’s most cohesive and layered album to date. Across the record’s 11 tracks, they reckon with the realities of distance and its all-too palpable divides, change, and doing the things you love just for the sake of doing them sincerely.
Bueno was produced and engineered by friend and first time collaborator Logan Krupovage (Hall Johnson, Dress Warm, Amelia’s Best Friend) and mixed and mastered by the newest addition to the band, Sam Franklin. Having produced the last two Stalefish releases, Franklin was welcomed into the fold after the departure of former songwriter and vocalist Jack Ryon. His deeply admired production work gained the trust of Hausman and Magee, who invited him to bring his songwriting to the table as a full-fledged bandmate. “If anyone was going to start writing songs with us, we knew it was gonna be Sam,” Hausman said.
What came from the individual songwriting sessions of Franklin, Hausman, and Magee was unintentionally the most cohesive batch of songs the band has ever written. It all begins on the breezy opening track, “PA Toll Tag,” as Magee writes autobiographically about being the band member the furthest away (he resides in Pittsburgh, pursuing a PhD in astrophysics), daydreaming about hitting the road and reuniting with his companions. Each fragment and perspective on the record fits perfectly, uniting each songwriter’s point of view. This continues on “Halfway ‘Round the World” as Hausman vocalizes the perspective of someone who’ll gladly oblige a friend the next time they make their way home, crooning, “anytime you’re in Texas, you stop by, and I don’t mind.” It’s almost a mirroring call and response between tracks as Franklin echoes Hausman on “So Far Away,” aimlessly expressing the observations of missing out while the song’s subject matter experiences life away, schmoozing rock stars, and living on the road.
This unintentional cohesion is the glue between each track, bridging together the stories of Stalefish’s three songwriters in a way that feels rooted in the band’s natural unity. The musicality of Bueno is similarly contemplative and at times melancholic, as sunny, fuzzed out guitars usher in movements of layered instrumentation that swell with intangible emotion. It only continues to grow as the record progresses, incorporating dynamic additions of keys, saxophones, and backing vocals from alternating members, weaving the patchwork pieces of their recordings together in more earnest and complex ways. The observations revisited throughout Bueno always continue to reframe the way we wryly look at the world, accepting it for what it may be but never faltering from observing it candidly. As Hausman muses on the album’s first offering, “Superstar”, “It’s somethin’ for nothin’, and nothin’s quite somethin’, is it not?”
Bueno extends Stalefish’s unique brand of slacker rock through joyous and progressively grandiose arrangements that feel as uplifting as they do unbridled in their honesty. Even when Hausman muses that, “I could give you everything, but everything’s embarrassing,” over a sea of textured guitar strums, saxophones, and crashing drums, you still want what he’s offering. Stalefish can downplay what they bring to the table but they always deliver and exceed our expectations.
- Helen Howard (2026)