US / THEM: The Living Pins (w/ Sixteen Deluxe's Carrie Clark) announce debut album & share lead single 'Roxy Unicorn"

“The Living Pins filter 60s psychedelic grooves through the more straightforward sensibilities of 90s alt-rock,

a combination that's both accessible and impossibly cool. Hearing Clark and Peltz harmonize over the garage-rock strut of opener ‘Raven,’ or the sweet pop-rock hooks of ‘Jaguar,’ you can see why Kim Deal of The Breeders counts herself as a fan.” — The Onion AV Club

"Channels classic pop rock sounds, brimming with assuredness and melodic hooks." -- Austin Town Hall

“Colorful, left-of-center rock and roll steeped Austin’s long psychedelic tradition… The Living Pins treat rock history like a box of strange ingredients, pulling familiar sounds apart and rearranging them into something playful, melodic, and wonderfully peculiar.” -- Glide Magazine

"A lively union of post-grunge guitar psychedelia and Stonesy chug, as if the nation's Nineties soundtrack evolved out of seminal garage rock comp Nuggets instead of the Velvet Underground." -- Austin Chronicle

Austin, TX band The Living Pins share the first single, and title track, from their forthcoming debut full length Roxy Unicorn today on all streaming services. "Roxy Unicorn" launched yesterday via Glide Magazine HERE. The song is now available to hear and share on all DSPs HERE.

Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran says this about The Living Pins: ”One of the things I can really recognize when I hear a bit of music -- is the FUN. The fun that they were having when they made that. And they were having such a great time making that music. In fact, if you do check out Living Pins, you will hear that in all of their music. They don’t have a lot of it out there, but they are having such a laugh when they’re doing this stuff, and I think it’s wonderful.”

Ever since Pam Peltz and Carrie Clark worked together slinging produce and cashiering at Wheatsville Food Co-op in the mid-90s, they’ve been drawing their own pirate map of the rock world as The Living Pins.

Releasing super well-received EPs and singles up til now, Roxy Unicorn is their first full-length album. A lush sonic landscape of Austin psychedelia pulled into focus with some 70s-FM-radio-era shimmer and polish. They’ve always had their eye on that candy window into the mystery tour.

Carrie Clark is a known Austin Music Hall of Famer as the frontwoman for 90s shoegaze favorites Sixteen Deluxe (Trance Syndicate, Warner Bros). Pam Peltz was the frontwoman for 90s Austin alt-rock trio Ursa Major and produced some beloved early Daniel Johnston tracks on Continued Stories. Sixteen Deluxe guitarist/singer Chris “Frenchie” Smith of the legendary Bubble Studios produced Roxy Unicorn.

“Roxy Unicorn”, the first single, is a baroque frolic inside an imaginary CBGB pop-up at Versailles, so they say. It has a tasty weird intro and then a galloping heartbeat to the end. “Secondary radiant joy” is a new favorite phrase for the summer.

Austin vinyl-based label Flak Records (“Because music should be physical”) will be doing a limited vinyl release when the full album Roxy Unicorn is officially out.

In 2023, Carrie made a special appearance at the A Curious Mix of People (University of Texas Press) book launch at the Central Austin Library and talked with its authors about the well-documented weirdness of the 90s Austin music scene and being frontwoman for Sixteen Deluxe. Here’s an excerpt:

Richard Whymark: “Didn’t you say you almost became Gwen Stefani?”

Carrie Clark: “Oh my God, yeah. At the time when Sixteen Deluxe was getting courted by every label in the book. Cuz it’s like ‘Oh, who’s the next Nirvana?’ or the next whatever. And yeah, I think one of those offers was ‘Hey, we’ll sign you guys but we get to decide what Carrie wears and we get to decide what her hair looks like and we get to decide all of these things about image… We said ‘No’”.

Roxy Unicorn will be available on LP and download/streaming on November 13th, 2026.

THE LIVING PINS LIVE:

09/18 Austin, TX - Continental Club

10/10 Austin, TX - Aristocrat Lounge

11/12 Austin, TX - Waterloo Records - pre-album release in-store

11/14 Austin, TX - Vinyl Beauty Bar