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After the summer success they’ve seen so far with their single "Light Me Up," California native Crooked Teeth, born Tyson Evans, keeps the ball rolling with their latest single "Hallelujah (Wish I Never Knew Ya)." Inspired by the catchy super pop choruses of The Chainsmokers and the high-spirited punk tempos of Blink-182, combined with poignant, heartfelt lyrics, the track creates an evergreen sonic experience that feels nostalgic yet novel.

“Hallelujah” begins with a warped and fuzzy tune-up that acts as a brief calm before the storm before listeners are catapulted into the single’s bombastic and guitar-riff-laden intro. "I coincidentally had this riff I’d been sitting on for, I kid you not, for years,“ says Evans. "It was just the first riff I would always play when I picked up an acoustic guitar… it just kind of worked out that I had something that was gonna work perfectly for what we were trying to do.” Backed by electric drums and poppy beats, Evans’ vocals draw us in as they paint a scene of driving to LA and reflecting on cutting ties with someone who is now worth not knowing.

There’s a shameless honesty and uninhibited emotiveness that seeps through the whole song. This is especially evident in lyrics like, “I took one for the heart / two for the brain,” which Evans explains contain a deeper meaning. "Not to be cliche, but it’s about a falling out of a relationship and walking away and really the stain of it all. If you were to get shot with three arrows or something like that, you take 'one for to the heart,' and you feel it immediately. You feel emotionally distraught. Then the 'two for to the brain,' is the realization that this is going to stick with me, and I can let it haunt me, or I can let it disrupt my flow or whatever, but either way, it’s stuck in there. This situation has stumped my brain, and it’s hitting my brain harder because now it’s like wedged in my memory."

The huge choruses sonically shake their fists at the sky as Evans and the crystalline harmonies that elevate the track sing, "screaming Hallelujah / wish I never knew ya / all this time / I saw right through ya." It anthemically curses the source of so much pain and toxicity while hoping for better days ahead. “When I was working on the rest of the EP," which Evans mentions will be releasing in early 2022, "I was driving from Santa Cruz to LA to record, and I wrote this song pretty much on my drive. I didn’t know what the beat was going to be or the melodies, but I was writing these lyrics just literally based on how I felt. It’s about having trauma of any sort and trying to rid yourself of it in a way that is healthy and cathartic, and not destructive anymore to relationships, and in a way what you can learn from it."

According to the artist, the aforementioned EP will explore themes of love, pain, and growth, all wrapped in a sound that will be equal parts reflective and dance-inducing. "These songs were born out of a sense of catharsis, the same relationship or I guess the same chapter and my life. So ‘Hallelujah’ would be the closer or the resolve..the closure of everything and walking away from it. Like the closing of the door of that chapter."

Listen to  "Hallelujah  (Wish I Never Knew Ya)" below: