Indie pop keeps getting more interesting when artists stop treating genre like a fence and start treating it like a toolbox. Secret Bad Boy’s new single “Flounder Fish,” featuring Woody Goss of Vulfpeck, is a good example of that shift. Chicago musician Ben Joseph does not just write a hook and call it a day. He builds a strange little world out of Gamelan loops, time-stretched breakbeats, analog synths, warped guitars, and a repurposed Holst melody, then drops a hard-grooving fever dream into the middle of it.
That fever dream is not random collage for collage’s sake. The track is the second single from Joseph’s forthcoming debut LP, But Like Why, and it takes a true story of addiction and incarceration and turns it into something surreal, rhythmic, and oddly playful. The pitch is Beck-inspired art-pop with fearless songwriting, and the production details back that up. You get looping percussion that feels ceremonial one minute and clubby the next. You get breakbeats stretched until they wobble. You get analog synth color and guitar textures that refuse to sit still. It is leftfield indie pop that still wants you to move.
Secret Bad Boy is the art-rock project of Ben Joseph, a longtime member of Ezra Furman’s band. That context matters. Joseph has spent years playing next to one of indie music’s more uncompromising voices, and you can hear the confidence that comes from that kind of apprenticeship. His songwriting sits at the intersection of experimentation and emotional honesty. The bio he shared is clear about the ingredients: indie rock, leftfield pop, modern classical music, and adventurous studio production. Songs that keep changing shape. Textures that surprise you on the second listen. Stories that stay personal even when the arrangement goes sideways.
The forthcoming album is built the same way. But Like Why features collaborations with Ezra Furman, Vulfpeck’s Woody Goss, producer Noam Wallenberg, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Packy Lundholm, and Brian Wilson collaborator Paul Von Mertens. That is not a random guest list. It is a room full of people who understand curiosity as a working method. Synth-forward arrangements, inventive sampling, and artful pop songwriting sit together instead of taking turns. Joseph is less interested in fitting neatly inside a lane than in making records that reward repeat listens.
Woody Goss’s presence on “Flounder Fish” is the headline for a lot of listeners, and fair enough. Vulfpeck fans know Goss as a musician who can make a groove feel both precise and human. Pairing that sensibility with Joseph’s collage instincts is smart. The track still files under Indie Pop, but it leans into art-rock restlessness: Gamelan patterns, breakbeat motion, analog grit, and a classical fragment pulled out of its original world and asked to live in a new one. In a year when a lot of indie and pop artists are chasing guitar grit, bedroom intimacy, or glossy maximalism, this one chooses the weirder path. It treats the studio like a workshop.
That is also why the song feels timely. Independent artists have more room than ever to mix classical sampling, global percussion, and club rhythm without waiting for a label committee to approve the mood board. The catch is that the experiment only works if there is a real song underneath it. Joseph’s pitch insists there is: a lived story, fearless writing, and a groove that does not apologize for being strange.
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What do you think of this collision of Gamelan loops, breakbeats, and art-pop storytelling? Does “Flounder Fish” scratch that itch for indie pop that still takes risks, or do you want Joseph even weirder on the full album? Drop a thought in the comments.
