The Korg Prologue that defined SSAANN‘s sound wasn’t even theirs. In the winter of 2024, Melissa Simes was stepping in as synth lead for Milwaukee indie band Known Moons when she got her hands on one. The glittery sheen she pulled out of it convinced her โ and her co-writer and producer Tommy Behan โ that the songs they’d been building for years were finally an album.
That album, “Higher,” is out 27 March 2026 on Broken Palace Records.
Simes spent most of her life on classical piano. Synthesizers were a different language until 2018, when she picked up a JunoDS88 โ her first โ and started recording loops. The shift came partly from her teenage years listening to electronic artists from the EDM golden era and wondering whether classical training and electronic music could share a room. The JunoDS88 was where the answer started.
“This record started to form after I began recording loops on my first synth, the JunoDS88,” Simes says. “After live orchestrating these loops solo, they were translated to a 4-piece band-setting, and the potential of these songs were slowly unveiled. Once I started working with Tommy Behan (drums/producer) in 2023, we were able to give these old songs a proper production glow-up, naturally started writing together, and eventually had an album on our hands. It’s really a dream to finally see these old songs ‘living their best life’ on a full, completed album.”
What’s now SSAANN is a four-piece: Simes on vocals and synth, Jake Schneider on guitar, Timothy Moder on bass, and Behan on drums.
The band sits between dreampop and shoegaze โ expansive reverb and hypnotic echoes, with guitar textures wide enough to fill a cathedral.
Lyrically, “Higher” sits with the quiet ache of looking back at past relationships and trying to step around silly drama, uncontrollable worries, and lingering conflicts.
“Wade,” one of the album’s singles, circles what it feels like to revisit a relationship that never properly ended. The song pulls between slow and sudden, drawing from shoegaze, settling into the feel of love offered to someone who didn’t want it. “Above It” is where Simes makes peace with the fact that nothing lasts forever.
“There’s a particular equanimity I’ve longed to create in my life,” she says of the song. “I wrote this as advice to comfort others, but quickly realized it’s also a reminder for myself.”
The video for “Above It” is stop-motion, made from nearly 1,500 stills of a handmade collage built out of crafts, paper, and odds and ends found around the house.
A second video, for the moody, pulsing “Channel (Can’t Handle),” was directed by Timothy Moder and follows Simes through a dark, barely lit house and an overcast dream sequence before landing on a celebratory full-band performance.
Simes had originally aimed for an EP. Then “Channel (Can’t Handle),” “Echo,” and “Wade” got written, and the record stretched.
“We surprised each other by realizing we could definitely release a full album,” she says. “Once the record was done, what surprised us the most was how complete it sounded. Despite these songs being a compilation of the past six years, they all resonated as a cohesive piece.”
Working with Behan was, as she puts it, the bigger shift. “He knew how to elevate my songs in a way as to not take away from the music, but add even more life into them. We recorded additional vocal parts, synth, guitar, etc. to all of these songs.”
Most of “Higher” was tracked DIY in the living room โ vocals, synth, guitar, bass โ with additional sessions at Silver City Studios alongside producer and mixer Josh Evert. A live string quartet plays the outro of “Center.”
Additional instrumentation came from Jake Schneider, Jenna Rades, and Jack Lundeen on guitar; Timothy Moder and Tori Yocum on bass; Viktor Brusubardis on cello; Kristian Brusubardis on violin and viola; and Ernest Brusubardis IV on violin. Jacob “Beanboi” Henbest mixed the album. Justin Perkins mastered it at Mystery Room Mastering.
Asked what fed into the writing, Simes points to three things. 7th chords, first โ there’s a maj7 or min7 in every song on the record, no exceptions.
“They’re just too lovely. I gotta have ’em.” Effect pedals โ the PerformVK, Shapeshifter, and Canyon all earn name-checks for the confidence they gave her with vocal processing and texture work, both at home and on stage. And solitude. S calls her own creative space her “little music laboratory.” On the listening side: Beach House, DIIV, Night Tapes, STRFKR.
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In Milwaukee, SSAANN are known for the DIY light shows they pair with their sets, turning gigs into something closer to a full-sensory experience. They’ve grown a regional audience and have national touring on the radar.
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“Higher” comes out via Broken Palace, the indie label brothers Will and Nick Evans started in 2024 alongside their indie rock group Stray Fossa. The name belongs to a place they used to hike to as kids โ an abandoned house site in the middle of nowhere.
“The idea came about as we were in between records with the band,” Nick says.
“Will had started his own project, Phantom Youth, and was also producing several artists on the side. Starting the label gave us a chance to work with artists we love and truly believe in โ and with music that is not our own.
The aim is to offer the type of support we would have loved and benefited from when Stray Fossa was just getting started โ especially now with the industry changing on a daily basis it seems. We have a small roster that includes our own projects and plan to keep it that way โ tight knit and familiar.”
“Higher” is the label’s second full-length release, after the third Stray Fossa record last summer.
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