ON THE RISE
For indie-pop artist SUNSCREEN, making music is all about fun and positivity that he can share with his listeners. This is on full display in his most recent track “MOVE WITH ME,” which has a punky, surfer vibe that is destined to be on your mind all day.
In “MOVE WITH ME,” SUNSCREEN wanted to capture the power of a group of people dancing together on the dance floor. The track is off the Nashville based musician’s brand new album called EAT SUNSCREEN. This is the first album SUNSCREEN has produced himself, and he plays every instrument aside from a little bit of electric guitar.
“It has a full band sound, but it is a solo project,” he said. “It has a bright, poppy, kind of surf rock sound that I was really wanting to chase. I feel like I went akin to Beach Boys, meets Footloose, meets The Cha Cha Slide.”
He referred to The Cha Cha Slide, as “MOVE WITH ME” is highly instructional before and after the choruses. There is even an official dance that is shown by SUNSCREEN and a group of backup dancers in a new music video.
“One, two
(Alright, alright)
Three, four
(We’re gonna move together)
Five, six, seven, eight
(Like this- celebrate!)
The video stars SUNSCREEN, dressed in some funky heart shades, a crocheted bucket hat and a pink leisure suit. His backup dancers “move with him” and get down with the new dance move that goes with the uplifting, flashy song that would have anyone moving.
EAT SUNSCREEN is a 10-track album that starts off with “MOVE WITH ME,” setting the tone hard with a catchy, uplifting ear worm of a tune. He began working on the album in January, making a song a month. It’s designed to exude joy, with each track touching upon glories of life including themes like love, traveling, and nature.
When SUNSCREEN writes a song like “MOVE WITH ME” he said he tends to get into a tunnel vision state and “powers through.” The next thing he knows, a song is there and he’s ready to rock.
“I kind of black out,” he said. “I have a creative focal point at the end of this tunnel. That song, ‘MOVE WITH ME,’ it’s pretty traditional rock and roll with drums, bass and guitar leading the way. That’s how I write a lot. This album sets the stage with these core rock and roll elements. The grand overarching theme is in the back of my head, but I won’t start putting it to lyrics until I get an instrumental vibe going.”
SUNSCREEN’s drive to make music goes back to high school in Waco, Texas, when he was an admitted “choir nerd.” He fell in love with the instrument of the voice, and this led to him wanting to learn to write his own songs, and create something positive for the world to hear.
“The spark that made me start wanting to write songs myself was placed in me sometime around high school,” he said. “I joined choir in my freshman year to check off a fine arts credit. I ended up loving it and kind of found my voice. It kind of took over as the ‘sport’ in my life for those high school years.”
It all started on a whim, and at the time it was the golden era of 2010s indie-pop rock. He loved bands like Foster the People and Group Love, and said his sound tends top reflect those days and the music coming from it. For the past year he has played under the moniker of SUNSCREEN, and he feels like he has really found his sound.
“I feel like I am the sum of my parts, which are my influences," he said.
SUNSCREEN has a goal to “unashamedly spread joy into the world.” He strives to bottle the joy found in the simple pleasures of life, and send a “serotonin blast of goodness” into the ears of listeners.
“There is a very distinct sound to all of my songs and distinct messaging in all my lyrics,” SUNSCREEN said. “If I can spread some light and focus on some of the goodness we can experience, I feel like I’m doing my part. Not to ignore pain, but there is so much positive to hone in on.”
Be sure to check out “MOVE WITH ME,” off SUNSCREEN’s album titled EAT SUNSCREEN, available on all platforms.
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ON THE RISE
As Belle & Sebastian share their buoyant 2026 Scotland World Cup anthem ‘It Only Takes One Lion’, frontman Stuart Murdoch has spoken to NME about capturing the feeling back home and his hopes for the team since childhood.
Released today (Tuesday June 2), the Scottish indie heroes’ bid for their nation’s tournament anthem was written after the team’s surprise 4-2 qualifying win against Denmark.
“I felt like we were watching history in the moment, like the hand of God from the old National Lottery adverts was pointing at us,” Murdoch told NME about that game-changing victory. “It was meant to be. Scotland aren’t a terrific team and Denmark are better, but it just felt that day that Scotland were destined to win. Three out of the four goals were things of beauty.”
Produced by and co-written with Pete Ferguson and premiered at the band’s recent London Royal Albert Hall show as part of the anniversary tour for their classic first two albums ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’, the soaring song is intrinsically Belle & Sebastian as it morphs from a hymn to a an orchestral disco jam as Murdoch sings of a nation’s hopes and his own boyhood dreams.
NME spoke to Murdoch from the band’s North American tour, where we found him in a graveyard in Texas. “I was just looking for a park because Austin is a pretty scary place downtown now, so I’ve ended up in the Texas Cemetery,” he shared via Zoom.
Was there anyone famous buried there?
“I was looking around and I found the founder of Austin City Limits, which is pretty cool as that’s where we’re playing tonight. I’m looking at one now and it just says, ‘Martin: he loved the law’. Then underneath it says, ‘Billie Louise: she loved the lawyer’.”
We joke that there’s the opening to a Belle & Sebastian song if there ever there was one. “It’s great! It’s given me inspiration.”
For now, read the rest of interview with Murdoch below as he tells us about Scotland’s chances, 30 years of hurt, if fans will be singing it at the top of their lungs in Canada, the US and Mexico this summer, and what’s next for the band.
NME: Hello Stuart. Here we are with ‘It Only Takes One Lion’ Who needs three?
Stuart Murdoch: “Who needs three? Good question. I wouldn’t know!”
What’s the mood been like in Scotland since you qualified?
“It’s funny. I’ve noticed this everywhere: with the World Cup there’s a mixture of cynicism and anticipation. When the actual tournament starts, everyone will get excited about it. Because of FIFA, the peace prize, the ticket prices, people seem quite down about it. I found that in Mexico. They were quite fed up with the general hype about it. I’m in the States just now and you shouldn’t believe all the hype: people are people. The States are just as ‘great’ as ever. We love coming here, we love the cities. The general sense of North American optimism will make for a good tournament.”
“With Scotland though, people will definitely be excited about it. You have to understand, it’s been 30 years since Scotland qualified so I think everybody and their dog has written a song for the team.”
How do you meet the challenge of penning a World Cup anthem, when there have been so many legendary bangers and absolutely shite duds?
“I never planned it. I woke up with a tune in my head and a feeling. That’s the way it should always be for songs. I couldn’t control myself and it was quite straight-forward. I wrote this initial bit about how I felt about the current World Cup team and the qualifying game. It was more introspective.
“When it starts off with, ‘The days are dark and long…’, it’s just my general feeling about football. I’ve been going to see my own team quite a lot recently. It’s my little anthem for how I feel about football and following Scotland for the last 50 years, just the ups and downs. It’s quite a heartfelt thing. When I was eight or nine, the Scottish team meant so much to me, it the thing I was most invested in. There’s a line in there about how I used to memorise the whole squad before ‘78 and 82.”
Tell us about lyric: “This is Scotland, where everyone knows you start with nothing… where you can join an army for peace”…
“My wife made the video for it and she said, ‘I’m not sure I like that line about everyone starting with nothing’. Our first game is against Haiti and they really have nothing. Their country is pretty poor and they’re going through hard times. It was almost a throwaway line and I’m not sure what I meant by it, but in a footballing sense every game starts with nothing. Even if it’s against Brazil, you’ve always got a chance!
“The army refers to The Tartan Army, which has really been quite a remarkable institution for the past 30 years. We changed from drunken buffoons that used to wreck things to this excellent supporting brigade.”
It’s not your standard football sing-along. Can you see it being sung in the terraces?
“I’m not sure, I didn’t cynically design it for that. Many people have said to me in the past, ‘None of your songs have a chorus, you need to write one’. ‘This is Scotland’ is a chorus! They things need to happen organically. I’m sure the fans will still be singing ‘Yes sir, I can boogie’ for years to come.”
What do you actually think of Scotland’s chances right now?
“With the last Euros, they maybe got stage fright or didn’t have that tournament experience. I think Andy Robertson [captain] will be telling them, ‘We really need to produce our best stuff’. If they do and we see them actually playing football, then I don’t really care about the results that much. I just want to see Scotland exceeding our expectations of them. That Denmark game was so crazy that everything after just feels like a bonus.”
If miracles do happen and Scotland make it to the final, how will you celebrate? A free gig in Glasgow?
“Of course, yes! Free everything. If we even got close, I think the whole country would shut down for a year and the GDP would drop. We’d go into a massive recession but no one would care.
“We were playing a gig in Mexico City and I told the crowd, ‘It’s you and us, Mexico and Scotland in the final’. Mexico have never really got close either. I told them it would be five goals a piece, even after everyone takes a penalty and we have to share the trophy. I would settle for that.”
You released two albums in quick succession with 2022’s ‘A Bit of Previous’, 2023’s ‘Late Developers’ and then your debut novel Nobody’s Empire in 2024. You’ve been busy! Is there any progress on new material?
“We went through a period where we recorded a lot and we said, ‘Let’s not record for a while and give ourselves a couple of cycles off’. We’re doing these 30th anniversary shows so we’re just going to lean on the back catalogue and cruise for a while. We’re doing a year on and a year off so everyone can focus on different things.
We’re not looking at new Belles stuff for a while. I’m meant to be developing Nobody’s Empire into a film, so that’s my next task. It’s a long way off from being made but I’m going to write the script for that.”
Scotland’s first World Cup tournament match is against Haiti on Sunday June 14, before they go on to play Morocco on Friday June 19 and Brazil on Wednesday June 24.
The band’s ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ anniversary tour continues throughout the summer, performing the iconic albums in full during across the UK, Europe, North America, Mexico, Australia, Singapore and Japan. Visit here for tickets and more information.
