Photo via The Linda Lindas - Facebook
The Linda Lindas (2026)
The Linda Lindas (2026)
When the Linda Lindas switched from Epitaph, an admired independent punk label, to Reprise, a major label that is part of the Warner Music Group, the L.A. quartet was already working on its third album, Gotta Get Out.
“Everything was happening creatively before we signed,” guitarist and singer Lucia de la Garza (a.k.a. Linda Linda No. 3) said during a recent Zoom chat. “What really made it feel like the right decision was how it didn’t really feel like something scary. It didn’t feel like someone else was taking control of our music.”
Contractually, that is true: the band will retain the rights to its master recordings. Artistically, that is also true: Gotta Get Out does not skimp on the punk and pop that were so powerful on the band’s previous albums, 2022’s Growing Up and 2024’s No Obligations, and it convincingly incorporates other styles.
“We were trying not to pick a lane,” de la Garza said. “We all write, we all sing, and we have a vast range of music tastes and styles. Instead of saying ‘it’s not the Linda Lindas’ sound,’ of course it’s the Linda Lindas’ sound if we write it.”
That attitude comes out in tracks like “Blood on Our Hands,” which combines protest lyrics, a roar derived from horrorcore rap, viciously slashing metallic guitar riffs, and a doom-rock tempo; “See You Next Time,” which is as breezily pretty and melancholy as the Sundays; and “Nothing Left,” which draws on Go-Go’s pop colors to brighten the no-future mood.
Collective Ideas
The variety comes in part from the band’s decision to create Gotta Get Out from ideas brought into the collective rather than from more fully formed individual songwriting. De la Garza, her younger sister Mila (Linda Linda No. 4, drums and vocals), the sisters’ cousin Eloise Wong (No. 2, bass and vocals), and Bela Salazar (No. 1, guitar and vocals) reveled in the process.
“It was always fun and we always made something that not any one of us could write on our own in our own space and room,” de la Garza said. “After being in a band together for more than eight years, we trust our musical instincts.”
That trust is important for a band whose oldest member, Salazar, turned 22 in mid-September. It was also important, during the creation of the album, to set aside little modern addictions like cell phones.
“The whole record is about needing to get out of distractions and routine and patterns,” de la Garza said. “Escaping that feeling that the world is moving by without you. I don’t know what came first, the getting out or the songs about getting out.”
Working again with Carlos de la Garza, whose production credits include Paramore and Bad Religion and who is also Mila and Lucia’s uncle, the Linda Lindas expanded the family vibe to Paramore’s lead singer, Hayley Williams, as an excellent duet singer on the candy-coated, modern-rocking, hook-laden “Closer.”
“When we recorded with her, we spent four hours chatting with her and one hour actually doing the song,” Wong said. “I love when friendship and fandom, but also playing together and working together, can all exist.”
The Linda Lindas perform 8 p.m. Sept. 29 at Turner Hall Ballroom.
