Bay Area musician Kevin Nichols refers to his music as “prunge,” which is short for pop-grunge, as he explained in an interview with What’s Up! Magazine. “My idea of ‘prunge’ is basically a combination of pop and grunge. Like, Nirvana’s Nevermind is in my mind a pop-grunge album, where as Bleach and In Utero are grunge… I wanted to get more of an element of power pop in there too, with heavy, heavy riffs in there and whatnot.”

You can definitely hear that coming through in his new single “My Friend,” which sounds like an alternate version of ’90s pop punk that pulled more from Dinosaur Jr and less from the Descendents. It’s a catchy, crunchy, unabashedly fun song, and it’s the first single off Kevin’s upcoming album Disappointer, which is due October 9 via Slang Church, who also put out the recent benefit compilation Long Armed Bill’s Summer Comp (Vol. 1) that Kevin is featured on.

Speaking about the new album, Kevin tells us, “That awful feeling when you did everything you could to avoid fallout amidst your pursuit of happiness as your truest self and still fail. That was what uncovered the vein I needed to explore within myself and this record came out of it. At first I felt Disappointer as an apathetic ‘I give up’ type response. Now I wear that title with pride; I’m just a disappointer. All my friends are disappointers. We have it in common that we are all seeking out our truest selves despite the hurt and guilt it will bring. This no longer scares me, instead I want to work on myself in order to have what it takes to properly address conflict. Anyone you lose along the way was never planning to stay. That reminds me who my chosen family is every day.”

Listen to the new song below…