Lowertown sign to Summer Shade and announce new album, Ugly Duckling Union

Lowertown is formed by Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg, who share in songwriting duties. "I Like You A Lot" is the pair's first preview of Ugly Duckling Union, their first release on Summer Shade, a boutique label under the Run For Cover Records family.

The track arrives as a rare love song from the duo, which examines the physical experience of infatuation through lo-fi instrumental textures. Discussing the track, Lowertown explain: “['I Like You A Lot'] was written about the hope of a new crush, and the intoxicating feelings of admiring and fantasizing about someone from afar.

Loving someone without yet knowing them, and being filled with the idea of the potential time spent together. This thinking can become obsessive and compulsive, almost like a sickness taking over the body, but maybe not in a particularly bad way. It is also about the insecurity and the uncertainty about these feelings being reciprocated or un-reciprocated."

Across the last few years, touring, separating from their label, and unhealthy attachment led to strain on both the friendship and creative partnership between Osby and Weinberg.

Following their 2022 album, I Love to Lie, Lowertown were called back to their roots in musical communities in Atlanta, Georgia, and communal corners of the internet — much like the Tumblr fan pages and Reddit forums that the band were immersed in through their teenage years — in order for Ugly Duckling Union to be made.

Together, they've constructed the story of Dale the duckling and his friends as they come together to defeat LBH, a media company that looks to separate and isolate to assert control. Bringing the concept to life, they've also created a playable Minecraft world, a handbook, plush dolls, and drawn comics to build upon the Ugly Duckling Union universe, reviving the spirit of fandom spaces across the physical and digital.

Ugly Duckling Union artwork

Ugly Duckling Union tracklist

"Mice Protection"
"Worst Friend"
"Echo of Desire"
"Forgive Yourself"
"Big Thumb"
"Cover You"
"I Like You A Lot"
"(I Like To Play With) Mutts"
"DIPSH*T"
"Anything Good Takes Blood"
"Found A"
"Some Things Never End"