Some songs pretend they do not see the red flags. RXW’s “Bad Habits” looks straight at them and walks in anyway.
That is the hook of this Chicago-born cinematic dark electronic pop-rock cut: you know the person or the habit is bad for you, every warning light is already flashing, and you still run toward the darker thing. Submitted as Alt Pop, the track is pitched as The Weeknd’s nocturnal seduction colliding with Fall Out Boy’s anthemic energy, then filtered through industrial texture, atmospheric guitars, and emotionally direct songwriting.
RXW stands for Raised X Wolves. It is the project of singer-songwriter Chris Pacific, built from the collision of electronic production, haunting melodies, and stories that refuse to stay buried. The project is not trying to sit neatly in one lane. Influences include Deftones, Crosses, The Weeknd, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and Fall Out Boy — which is another way of saying the songs can turn aggressive and then go vulnerable without dropping the emotional thread.
Pacific frames the current chapter as three songs looking at darkness from three angles. “RARE” looks at abuse, family betrayal, and the cycles that get passed down until someone decides the cycle ends with them. “A.I.” looks outward at isolation, identity, and what it means to stay human as the line between organic and synthetic gets harder to see. “Bad Habits” is the inward one. Temptation. Toxic attraction. The strange comfort of something you already know can hurt you. The narrator is not hiding. The pitch is that he warns you before the damage is done.
That framing fits a wider moment in alt pop and dark pop-rock right now. Listeners keep showing up for records that treat desire as complicated instead of cute — night-drive electronics, big choruses, and lyrics that admit self-sabotage instead of dressing it up as romance. RXW is working that space on purpose: scars as songs, survival as sound, darkness transformed rather than buried.
If you only hear the elevator pitch, you might expect a straight Weeknd clone or a pop-punk revival flex. The project description is more specific than that. Cinematic production. Industrial atmosphere. Pop hooks that still serve the story. Aggressive one minute, exposed the next. The through-line is not genre purity. It is the idea that the darkest experiences do not have to stay unspoken.
Independent artists building a world like this — a small cycle of songs that talk to each other instead of a one-off single with no context — still need a clean path onto the platforms people actually use. DistroKid is one of the simplest ways to get tracks onto the major stores and keep more of the money. If you are releasing your own work, you can take 7% off membership here: https://distrokid.com/vip/seven/2058328
What do you think of this blend of nocturnal electronics and anthemic pop-rock? Does “Bad Habits” sound like a late-night spiral or a warning you ignore on purpose? Drop it in the comments.
