well, here we go. the first song of the year and it's been a long time coming. since november of last year when we dropped our debut album, we've been trying really hard to push ourselves creatively to make something completely new while still remaining true to our original "cudos sound." over the past year, we've been listening to a ton of indie rock, 90s/2000s punk, and wonky electronic music. after following our newly found inspiration, we bring you our new song, "lotus." we made "lotus" with our friend matt (tvvin), who we've been working with behind the scenes for the past year. he's been an amazing and refreshing person to collaborate with, and we couldn't be happier to put out this song with such a great dude. a lil backstory: we originally met matt back in 2021 when we went to a writing camp in chicago and started a previous side project, wabansia. ultimately, that project died as some of the members were going in a different direction creatively, but the few of us left really loved the music we were making together, so we thought, why not continue it on our own? so we did. at the time of making this decision, we (cudos) were working on our album "archetype arcade." yet we still wanted to keep working with matt, and luckily for us, he was willing to help us out with many of the songs on the album. once that project was finished in late 2023, we started working on new stuff exclusively with him. which brings us to our 2-week writing camp on lake champlain in new york in october of 2023. matt flew all the way out from san diego to our hometown, plattsburgh, ny, and the three of us locked in, worked on new music, and filmed the whole thing until we dropped. throughout the camp, we came up with a bunch of new ideas that we loved. after the camp, we spent the next few months fine-tuning and working out the kinks of each song, which brings us to today, with the release of "lotus." "lotus" is the first song we're sharing from that 2-week camp, which fuses the raw emotion of midwest emo with the dynamic energy of modern electronic music. we've crafted a unique and dynamic sound that blends the best of both our worlds. our creative process has been unconventional yet incredibly rewarding, leveraging remote collaboration tools to bring our ideas to life. anyway, we hope you fuck with this new direction we're heading in. it's been a long process but really rewarding for us, and we can't wait to share everything else we've got down the pipeline. until then, peace! - dan & alex