late night drive home have never known a world without internet — without access to the endless stream of joy, sorrow, and titillation that we all tune in and tune out to on the daily. In many ways, the guys can’t extricate themselves from that reality, but they’re trying to grapple with it. The culmination of that, then, is the buoyant yet ominous as I watch my life online, the band’s debut album on Epitaph, out June 27th.

“The record is a critique and a meta representation of the current online landscape: a whole new world or giant united country that connects us between cities, forcing us to be online. Instant gratification is at our fingertips — likes, follows, and entertainment a click away,” says guitarist Juan “Ockz” Vargas. “It shows the listener how we grew up in the early days of peak internet — how we saw it all unfold. We want to give our perspective on the internet while creating art alongside it.”

late night drive home was born in El Paso, Texas, and Chaparral, New Mexico, hardworking communities where the collars were mostly blue — a quality that the band would bring to their music as self-taught craftsmen. It started out as a modest collaboration between guitarist Juan “Ockz” Vargas and his high school friend, vocalist Andre Portillo. After mutually getting into aughties indie-rock, the two started composing music in 2019. They dropped their first EP on Soundcloud in 2019, before rounding out the band in 2021 with drummer Brian Dolan and Vargas’ cousin, bassist Freddy Baca.

After recording their first EP as a full band, 2021’s Am I sinking or Am I swimming?, in Vargas’ bedroom, you could say the quartet exploded. Namely with the release of their single, “Stress Relief,” a blast of early-Aughts indie that racked in tens of millions of streams. Their first full compilation of songs, How Are We Feeling? dropped in 2022, and after signing with Epitaph in 2023 — and releasing 2024’s grunge-inspired EP i’ll remember you for the same feeling you gave me as i slept — they found themselves playing stages their indie idols previously shredded: Coachella, Shaky Knees, Austin City Limits, and Kilby Block Party.

Since the end of the pandemic, though, the band has been dreaming up as I watch my life online. “Sonically the record is expertly produced — it was the first work we put out that was recorded in professional studios and not our bedrooms,” Vargas says about working with producer Sonny Diperri. “Topically, the album is about the internet. As a Gen-Z band, we want to give an accurate representation of how it feels to be always online. Our generation is forced to care so much about its online identity, it’s like ‘your profile is as important as your outfit.’”

The resulting suite of tracks is a series of online vignettes, starting with “as i watch my life online,” which arrives on a wave of Soma — the band digs Brave New World — a spaced-out trippy jam that Dolan says “speaks to our relationship with the internet — making fun of others’ art, projecting your emotions online as a journal, or being afraid to. It is a huge critique of how some people are scared to represent themselves online even as artists. It sets the tone and central theme of the entire album.”

“she came for a sweet time” pogos in next on a wave of bouncy guitars. “That song speaks about online hookup and meet-up culture — the instant gratification cultivated by TikTok and Reels,” Vargas says. “Online dating apps work the same way; you’re able to swipe between hundreds of individuals in the span of five minutes, turning love into content.” We get a little reprieve from the digital doldrums on “day 2,” a banger that’s made for late-night dancefloors. “It’s about finally meeting up with a person and enjoying the time away from your phone — but also how hard it is to find love in the modern age,” Vargas says. And then it’s time to touch grass with “opening a door,” a Vines-tinged call to do just that.

Boppy rager “american church” really hammers home the idea that the Internet is the opiate of the masses. “The first two songs on the record are really analog, but this one just glitches out on the outro — descending into digital madness,” Vargas says. “That’s mirrored in the lyrics, which are about seeing someone you love spiral — whether because of the internet or another addiction.” That endless scroll is encapsulated further in “modern entertainment,” a Strokes-esque strut featuring layered guitars that Vargas tracked to echo the experience of losing yourself in your phone. “I’m just overwhelming the listener constantly with all these different sounds,” he says. “I just wanted to convey what I feel when I scroll on social media and on Tiktok.” And, on the other side of the screen, there’s “uncensored on the internet,” a deceptively sunny song that Portillo says is about a person whose “only connection to any of their loved ones is the internet. So they’re just watching them go through life on a screen.”

“if i fall” jangles in bright and light despite a paralyzing fear of intimacy. “It started off as a love song, and then it went off the rails,” Portillo says. “I kind of just embraced that, because I thought it was very beautiful how I was writing this song and then these fears just kind of arose.” The riffy, celestial “dead star,” follows, which is about taking a chance on a love that might have already burned out. “It’s almost like you’re dipping your feet in, or you’re just diving in head first, not knowing that it could work out,” Portillo says.

“1985” honeys in next, a sad, searching track about a friend who “dips off of the face of the internet, and you’re not really sure why,” Portillo says. And then there’s the first single, “terabyte,” a glitchy yet crystalline rumination on porn addiction. “Whether you like it or not, a lot of people go through it and a lot of people suffer,” Portillo says. “A lot of people never really understand what porn addiction does to your brain and how it objectifies people in general.”

After all the pixels and pings, the notification and notes, the record rounds out with the aching, acoustic “she’ll sleep it off,” where we follow our protagonist as they take their last breaths, hoping against hope that they lived their life right. “There’s a line that I repeat, ‘watch your life go by, watch your life go by, watch your life go by,’” Portillo says. “So, it’s kind of alluding to the album’s title. As I was writing it, I envisioned the eerie feeling that you get after visiting somebody’s profile after they died. You’re quite literally watching that person’s life go by online — at least what they shared there, anyway.”

And that’s the band’s message, really. The photos on your phone shouldn’t be your identity; your posts aren’t your inner monologue.