Toronto Psych-Punk Powerhouses WINE LIPS Preview TV Dinner With “Projector”
Toronto’s Wine Lips return with “Projector,” the first single from their newly announced fifth album TV Dinner, arriving August 28 on Stomp Records. Drawing from the blown-out spirit of ’90s garage punk while retaining the psychedelic chaos that has become the band’s calling card, “Projector” channels the urgency of Teengenerate, The Hives, New Bomb Turks, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, and Osees into a sharp blast of scorched guitars, pounding drums, and razor-wire attitude. The single also marks the first lead vocal appearance from drummer Aurora Evans, offering an electrifying introduction to the next chapter of one of modern rock’s most relentless bands. Over the last decade, Wine Lips have quietly become one of the most successful independent rock bands to emerge from Canada in a generation. Their records have accumulated more than 45 million streams, earned international acclaim, landed songs in film, television, and video games, and carried the band across North America, Europe, the UK, Hong Kong, and China. In the long and strange lineage of Canadian rock, somewhere between Rush, April Wine, and Tricky Woo, lurks Wine Lips: a fuzz-covered northern beast that keeps appearing in unexpected places, leaving blown speakers, sweaty clubs, and new converts in its wake.
“Projector” wastes no time making its intentions clear. Driven by Evans’ commanding vocal performance, the track takes aim at the kind of person who projects their insecurities, frustrations, and baggage onto everyone around them. Every sneering lyric lands with purpose while the band barrels forward behind her in a glorious racket of overdriven guitars and barely contained momentum. It’s direct, cathartic, and impossible to ignore. The song offers the first glimpse into TV Dinner, a thirteen-track collection shaped by the absurdities of contemporary life. Across the album, Wine Lips tackle burnout, addiction, doomscrolling, dead-end jobs, housing frustrations, and the low-grade anxiety humming beneath modern existence like fluorescent lights in a suburban strip mall. Rather than wallow in any of it, the band responds the only way they know how: louder, faster, and with zero interest in cleaning up the mess.
Recorded with longtime collaborator Simon Larochette at The Sugar Shack in London, Ontario, TV Dinner captures Wine Lips at their most immediate and instinctive. Embracing imperfections and leaving room for mistakes, strange moments, and happy accidents, the band deliberately resisted polishing away the record’s rough edges. The result is a collection of songs that feels alive, unpredictable, and wired directly to the energy that has made Wine Lips such a formidable live act. If previous Wine Lips records often felt like psychedelic escapes from reality, TV Dinner keeps its feet planted firmly on the cracked pavement outside. It’s a record built for an era of glowing phone screens, rising rents, information overload, and endless noise. “Projector” is the opening shot. Loud, urgent, and impossible to ignore. Warm up the microwave. TV Dinner is almost ready.