There’s a real storm behind Blame It On The Weather—not just the metaphorical kind. When Hurricane Helene tore through North Carolina, it didn’t just leave wreckage in its path, it left Kerosene Heights sitting with a feeling they couldn’t quite shake. “There’s a lot of things based on transition and change,” says vocalist and guitarist Chance Smith, “as well as talk about the weather specifically. That’s been an omnipresent thing in our lives with the hurricane, and it felt like it fit the mood and the throughline of the record.”
Out August 15th on SideOneDummy, Blame It On The Weather is the Asheville, NC band’s second full-length, a jagged emotional document that sounds as restless as the life that shaped it. And today they’ve shared its lead single, “New Tattoo,” a song Smith wrote just two weeks before recording. “We had never played it together prior to recording it,” he says. “I got married this year and the song is about that. I’m asking to be a permanent part of you for the rest of your life, like a tattoo.”
There’s something fitting about that—a song written last-minute becoming the anchor of a record so full of upheaval. But it also speaks to the way the band is working now: collaborative, spontaneous, increasingly locked-in. Since 2023’s Southeast of Somewhere, Kerosene Heights has been in motion, dropping a split with Swiss Army Wife and the Leaving EP in 2024, which marked the debut of drummer Benji Bennis. With Smith, guitarist Justin Franklin, and bassist Elle Thompson, Bennis brought in a fresh dynamic that changed the way things clicked.
“Leaving felt like the beginning of the era that we’re in right now as a band,” says Smith. “And this feels like the record we’ve all been wanting to put out since the band got started.”
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Franklin sees that shift, too: “From the inception of our band to this album, you can really see how it’s developed from Chance writing songs to everyone putting our own things on top of that. With each release we’ve done since our first EP [2022’s no more bad dreams], it’s been cool to see how everybody has been able to inject a little bit more of their ideas and their own musical identity and personality into a lot of these songs. To me, this release is our band really making a statement.”
They recorded Blame It On The Weather with Billy Mannino at Two Worlds Studio in Queens, NY—someone whose work with Oso Oso and Prince Daddy & The Hyena makes a lot of sense here. It’s a precise, aching record that lets itself unravel just enough to feel real. Opening with the quietly devastating “Sunsetting” and closing on the title track’s desperate optimism, it thrives on the chemistry the band has built, with Bennis crediting the “magic of Asheville” for how the group has gelled.
Kerosene Heights make no bones about their admiration for bands like Grown Ups, but they’re not just chasing ghosts anymore. What’s here is theirs—a collection of tracks that crash and bloom with emotional clarity, without ever trying too hard to be pretty. It sounds like a band that’s learned how to move forward while still holding onto what matters.
To support the release, they’re hitting the road hard, with dates alongside Dikembe, Michael Cera Palin, Swiss Army Wife, Summerbruise, and more. Dates include a full stretch in July and August, culminating in performances across the East Coast and the South, including The Fest later in the year.
Tour Dates
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Kerosene Heights only
6/12 Pittsburgh, PA
6/13 Bowling Green, OH
w/ Equipment and Summerbruise
6/24 Brooklyn, NY
6/25 Providence, RI
6/26 Milford, CT
6/27 Highland Park, NJ
6/28 Merchantville, NJ
w/ Dikembe and Swiss Army Wife
7/17 Atlanta, GA
7/18 Nashville, TN
7/19 Newport, KY
7/20 Chicago, IL
7/22 Detroit, MI
7/23 Pittsburgh, PA
7/24 Massapequa, NY
7/25 Philadelphia, PA
7/26 Washington, DC
7/27 Durham, NC
w/ Michael Cera Palin and Newgrounds Death Rugby
8/19 Washington, DC
8/20 Richmond, VA
8/21 Charlotte, NC
8/22 Greenville, SC
