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We’ve been fans of Denver-based band NOT A TOY since the early days of the pandemic and are extremely excited to share the premiere of their latest song, "say so," an R&B-adjacent tune that provides all the ‘sadboi’ summer energy you’ve been needing. The band, consisting of Branson Hoog, Benji Spoliansky, Jeremy Marmor, and TJ Wessel, are all high school friends who have a diverse musical background that blends into a genre-skirting but impressionable sound that is catchy, immersive, and hard to not gravitate to.

On the construction of the song NOT A TOY shares, “This idea of wanting someone so bad, but you’re stuck in limbo waiting for them to finally say how they feel. The song’s title was actually 'Tunnel Vision' for a long time because one of the main ideas behind the song was about loving someone so much that nothing else even matters, but eventually, we switched the title to 'say so' because the song evolved into dealing with that weird phase of a relationship when you're kind of insecure because you don't know if the other person's feelings are temporary or the real deal. And being in that place where you love them so much and all you need from them is to finally open up, 'Say so and I’ll drop it all and find you”, or if not, just say so and I’ll settle for loving you from a payphone.'

That energy is felt even more when you unpack the circumstances of the video, a story that almost has more melodrama than one is fit to believe. “The music video for 'say so' had quite the adventure," shares the band. "We initially shot a ton of footage on the road while we were touring with De'Wayne, but our van got robbed in Chicago within an hour of us pulling up, luckily they didn't get into our trailer with all of our instruments, but they did steal a laptop and all of our hard drives which had all of the footage on them. So when we got back home we had to last minute shoot everything over again and find a way to make it work. Obviously, it wasn't how we envisioned it to start, but we had fun winging it and putting together something entirely new. We had this idea to describe the inspiration behind the song as if it were us answering interview questions, and then we were hyped that OTW was down to premiere it so we even integrated them into the video. "say so" is a song that's near and dear to our hearts, so despite the ups and downs making it, we're so happy with how it turned out. We hope you love it too.”

We loved it so we had to share. Check out this and more from NOT A TOY as they are the perfect crescendo to your sad summer vibes.

Watch the "say so" video below: