SWEETIE SHARE 'DOGTOOTH' VIDEO, ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM
Sydney trio Sweetiecarve feral, gothic post-punk into something sharp, political and impossible to look away from on their debut album Dogtooth, due for release on 25 September via Blossom Rot Records. Today, they share the album's title track alongside its accompanying video.
Recorded with Australian producer heavyweight Anna Laverty (Courtney Barnett, Folk Bitch Trio, Peep Tempel), mixed by Wade Keighran and mastered by George Nicholas,Dogtooth captures the raw nerve of what it feels like to inhabit a body politicised by default.
Post-punk unease, gothic country melancholy, and snarling rock sensibilities form the record’s backbone, but it’s the band’s instinct for storytelling that gives it bite. Across 11 tracks, the trio draw on gothic Australian narratives, mythic archetypes and the slow rot of late capitalism to craft a visceral portrait of what it means to be a woman in contemporary Australia.
In contrast to its title, ‘Dogtooth’ is a love song. Vocalist Lily Keenan explains, “It’s about loving everything, the imperfections, the details, right down to their canines. What does it mean to love someone like a dog? Devotion, obsession maybe, or maybe just becoming something that can love without embarrassment. Dogtooth is a song that treats falling in love like a minor supernatural event.”
Credit: Hannah Scott-Stevenson
The accompanying video, directed by Imogen Grist (Babitha, PNAU, Cxloe), captures the trio embracing instinct over inhibition as they tear through a series of fast-paced, canine-inspired scenes. Lily shares, “It’s a tongue-in-cheek take on the title - Sweetie might be turning into dogs. We shot the clip on Imogen’s old family farm on Wiradjuri Land (Orange) as well as in an eerie new housing development nearby. We were just on the edge of society, embracing the notion of abandoning it entirely and heading into the bush.”
‘Dogtooth’ follows the band's recent single ‘Godzilla’, their first new music since 2023, which reintroduced Sweetie as bold, snarling and spiky, marking a new era for the band and a huge step forward sonically. Drawing inspiration from PJ Harvey, Goat Girl, gothic fiction and spaghetti westerns, Sweetie turn unlikely reference points into something immediate, gritty and unmistakably their own.
Formed during 2020’s lockdowns, Lily Keenan (vocals, guitar), Rikki Clark (drums) and guitarist Lucy Warriner started Sweetie with little more than a desire to learn how to play. A band felt like the quickest way to figure it out. Six years on, Sweetie isn’t interested in smoothing their rough edges - they’d rather sharpen them.
Following the runaway success of their first single ‘Boundary Queen’ in 2021, the band released two EPs, Collision and Punch the Shark, which were recorded and produced by Cloud Control’s Alister Wright and Party Dozen’s Jonathan Boulet respectively and released via their label home at Blossom Rot Records. The singles received airplay across BBC Radio, triple j, Double J and widespread community radio support.
Sweetie have since shared stages with the likes of Tops, Body Type, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Murlocs, Polish Club, The Black Lips, and Floodlights, played festivals alongside the likes of The Arctic Monkeys and Lil Nas X, as well as sold out shows of their own.
With Dogtooth, Sweetie sidestep rock’s tired macho mythology, instead embracing a sound that is feminine, complex, but still armed with a razor-sharp bite.
