San Tropez didn’t just tiptoe back onto the scene — they drifted in on a vapor trail of reverb and soft static, armed with Museum of Modern History, a second record that didn’t beg for attention so much as it absorbed you whole. If Maybe Tomorrow cracked the door open in 2023, then Museum of Modern History knocked down a wall and replaced it with a cathedral made of delay pedals and half-remembered daydreams. Today they are premiering a brand-new video and their first single, "Swear Off the Sunlight," from the new record.
Like My Bloody Valentine at their most blissed-out or Slowdive at their most submerged, San Tropez painted in tones instead of lines. These nine tracks feel like they were tracked to tape inside a half-empty movie house, every chorus echoing off the seats. They did it again at Lakehouse Studios in Asbury Park, New Jersey — the same bunker where they birthed their debut. But this time they invited some co-conspirators to smear more colors across the walls: Marissa Paternoster, whose guitar cuts through the fog like a lighthouse beam; Zack Sandler’s saxophone curling like smoke around the bass; and Victoria Benesch’s voice threading silk through the cracks.
The lead single, “Swear Off the Sunlight,” is the heart of this drifting spaceship. It’s a two-part sigh that starts with shimmering sadness and ends floating somewhere just outside Earth’s gravity. If Pavement taught us that indie rock could slouch and stumble, San Tropez remind us it can float and dissolve too — the hook is a memory you can’t quite replay but still hum when the city noise drowns everything else out.
Directed by Moab-based filmmaker Sawyer Nunley, the video for San Tropez’s new single, “Swear Off the Sunlight,” captures the sublime collision of isolation and spectacle. Known for his drone cinematography of the other-worldly terrain of Utah, Nunley turns the bloom of fireworks into a surreal dreamscape only experienced through his drone modifications to expose a completely new side of an ancient art. The video is a perfect visual analogue for the track’s emotional arc —moments of stillness set against the scale of something much larger. Museum of Modern History is the invitation to a new reality that San Tropez has created.
Ralph Nicastro, Albie Connelly, Frank Bridges, Andy Fountas, and Phil Pirri have built a place where dream pop drips into your headphones and reshapes the afternoon. Museum of Modern History didn’t reinvent the shoegaze wheel, but it polished it until you could see your own reflection spinning back at you. Today we are proud to bring you "Swear Off the Sunlight".