Imaad Wasif - Superconsciousness (2026)

Imaad Wasif returns with a sweeping new body of work that captures the wide emotional spectrum of an artist in transformation. Known as an enigmatic solo artist, long-time member of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and frontman of recently reunited slowcore legends lowercase, Wasif has spent the last two years in near-constant motion - touring, writing, rebuilding, and reconnecting with parts of himself he thought he’d left behind.

The album was conceived and completed between 2022 and 2025, in the quiet moments between storms - skirting waves of disillusionment with a world in crisis and written in the margins while Wasif toured as the fourth member of Yeah Yeah Yeahs for Cool It Down. The timeline reached its breaking point when his town of Altadena burned in the Eaton fire, displacing him in its aftermath. In between it all Wasif found himself writing compulsively, often on guitar or piano in temporary homes, chasing the thread of something raw and unguarded. What began as scattered fragments - sound sketches, lyrics pulled from coat pockets, trance-like raga motifs, late-night meditations on god consciousness and self-erasure - slowly cohered into a record about belief, detachment, grief, and spiritual rupture. Rising out of the smoke of that time, the album came together amid so much disruption.

The first single, “Believe,” arrived almost by accident - a mantra Wasif began playing live, only to watch audiences instinctively sing and clap along, long before the song was even released. “It’s the first song I’ve ever written that sparked something like that,” he says. “I’m essentially a hardcore nihilist with a heaving heart, but the song reminded me that belief is what you make it.” Produced by Lewis Pesacov (Julius Eastman, Best Coast) and arranged with gloriously lush cello from Heather McIntosh (Elephant 6 Collective), the track contrasts Wasif’s rough edges with symphonic warmth, living somewhere between Spacemen 3’s devotional haze and the emotional candor of Plastic Ono Band.

If “Believe” shows Wasif at his most open-hearted, “Echoing” reveals him at his most vulnerable. Written in one sudden burst and recorded almost entirely live - the song is a stark dedication to the late artist Silke Otto-Knapp. Unadorned and intimate, it feels like a séance with memory itself, drifting on spectral synths from Nick Zinner. “I only hear joy in this,” he says, “even though it may be the saddest song I’ve written.”

From there, the album swings into cosmic territory with “We Are Hunters,” a psilocybin-born raga that began on a 12-string guitar before blossoming into a multidimensional piece of textural mysticism with an edge that skirts the territory between Sonic Youth’s Sister and the driving kraut rock of Neu! Inspired by East Indian classical modality, William Burroughs–esque cut-up lyric fragments, and a personal reckoning in Paris, the song is split into two worlds - a perfect schism, as Bobb Bruno noted during early demos - bringing together all of Wasif’s personas into one, unified shape.

These songs, and the album as a whole, crystallize a moment where every version of Wasif merge into something startlingly direct. Even with the scale of collaborators involved (Rocco DeLuca, Garrett Ray, Heather McIntosh, Mike Bulington, Nick Zinner, and producer Lewis Pesacov), the album feels deeply personal, as if each track is carved from the same interior space.

This era also marks an unexpected parallel storyline: the surreal and triumphant reunion of lowercase, the cult band Wasif fronted in the 1990s. “We broke up in 1999 - no one cared,” he says. “It’s totally crazy that now we’re playing with Brainiac, Iceage, Unwound, and teenagers are wearing lowercase shirts and asking us to sign old CDs. Reality feels like it’s bending around me.” Meanwhile, he has continued touring with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, most recently on their orchestral “Hidden In Pieces” reimagination tour.

Still, the center of gravity is this new album - a work that gathers every fragment of the past few years and refracts them into something symphonic, spiritual, and emotionally electric. It is both a culmination and a new beginning, the sound of an artist walking through fire toward something luminous on the other side.