late night drive home - as i watch my life online (2025)

late night drive home are releasing their debut album as "I watch my life". A criticism of their adolescence always existing in the shadow of the internet, the 13-track offering codes together vignettes of mistaking online connection for something real. With their success outgrowing the bedrooms they used to create in, late night drive home’s debut album is the first time they’ve worked in proper studios. And with this growth, we see them move from the indie-rock bucket to a more expansive, electronic realm.

“Over-exposed and over-stimulated, desensitized to what is real and what is fabricated, desensitized to the simple things,” flows off lead singer Andre Portillo’s tongue about the forthcoming album. “This constant need for more of you has become a Pandora's box in this modern age. I'm obsessed, you mean so much to me and without you, I would be staring at a different reflection in the mirror. You've made me. You've destroyed me. I sometimes wonder why I can't live without you.”

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.”

late night drive home:
Andre Portillo, vocals
Juan Vargas, guitar
Freddy Baca, bass
Brian Dolan, drums

TRACKLIST

1. late night drive home - as i watch my life online
2. late night drive home - she came for a sweet time
3. late night drive home - day 2
4. late night drive home - opening a door
5. late night drive home - american church
6. late night drive home - modern entertainment
7. late night drive home - uncensored on the internet
8. late night drive home - if i fall (would you crawl under my skin)
9. late night drive home - deadstar
10. late night drive home - if i knew i was dying (i would stare at the sun) 
11. late night drive home - last seen online 
12. late night drive home - terabyte
13. late night drive home - she'll sleep it off