Emily Kinney may be perhaps best known as Beth from The Walking Dead, but that character’s been dead for a few seasons now. She’s had plenty of other roles since — including her next one as a young mother whose daughter is battling cancer on Netflix’s forthcoming Messiah — but she’s also been focused on her music career. Today, Kinney has announced her new album, Oh, Jonathan.
Due out August 24th, Oh, Jonathan was largely written and recorded alongside producer Ben Greenspan. Steeped in romantic nostalgia, the record revolves around a crush Kinney had on a pop punk guitarist (one assumed was name Jonathan… get to work, Internet sleuths!) she first saw on MTV.
That theme is clearly present on the effort’s latest single, “Boy Band Hero”. The bopping, airy twee track finds Kinney “sending up a prayer/ A little goodbye cry/ For the boy band hero from junior high.” In the song’s video, director Jason lee Denton captures Kinney daydreaming about her youth in her Nebraska home, all shot through a lens that warps around glaring flares and filters. Check it out below.
Back in the fall, Kinney shared another album single, “Mermaid Song”. “When I wrote that song, I suddenly felt a lot of freedom,” Kinney said of the track in a press release. “The synths that you hear became the sonic landscape and starting point for the whole record. I stopped fighting making Oh Jonathan, and felt motivated to get it out in the world. I realized I didn’t need anyone’s permission to put out the record or to legitimize my song-writing ability.”
