By Kyra Puetz

Beach Bunny fans rejoice! The Chicago indie-pop band has returned with their newest single, “Good Girls (Don’t Get Used)” in anticipation of their upcoming EP, “Blame Game.” “Blame Game” will be out on Jan. 15 and will feature four songs: “Good Girls (Don’t Get Used),” “Love Sick,” “Good Guys,” and “Blame Game.” This is coming pretty soon after the release of their debut album, “Honeymoon,” which was only released last February-however, I’ll take new Beach Bunny any day. 

“Good Girls (Don’t Get Used)” opens with about a millisecond of a beat before Lili Trifilio, singer and founder of Beach Bunny, bursts into the lyrics and immediately questions the actions of the boy she’s singing about. Shots are taken early on, with lines like: “Say you miss me, say you wanna kiss me / I liked it better when you improvised the story we had / If you adore me, why do you ignore me? / I liked it better when you sent me ‘sorry’ when I was sad.”

The person she’s singing about definitely isn’t a new concept. Haven’t we all experienced someone who claims to be into you but their words don’t correspond with their actions? It can be extremely frustrating to have someone match your energy one day and completely ignore you the next. That’s one of my favorite things about Beach Bunny and Trifilio’s music in general: she knows how to articulate my feelings better than I know myself.

“Good Girls (Don’t Get Used)” is a new sound for Beach Bunny, but if this is a preview of what’s to come, it’s definitely a step in the right direction. Trifilio takes their usual cutesy indie-pop sound and transforms it into a badass, take-it-or-leave-it power anthem. In an emailed press release, Trifilio writes: “I wanted to create a sassy song that calls out players by talking down to them as if they were children, showing that poor communication skills and mind games are immature. It shifts the blame to the person that was acting disrespectful, instead of myself.” 

Sassy looks good on Trifilio, whose songs usually lament about boys and what went wrong with their relationship or unrequited crushes. As Beach Bunny is becoming more popular, you can see and hear the confidence growing in both Trifilio and the band’s music. There is much to be confident about; three years after vowing to play Lollapalooza, the band snagged a Thursday afternoon set in 2019. A few months after that, they signed to Mom and Pop records in Oct. 2019. And, of course, “Honeymoon” was released in Feb. 2020. It seems like Beach Bunny is on an upward trajectory these days. 

“Good Girls (Don’t Get Used)” is streaming everywhere now, along with the video game themed music video that also premiered on Nov. 30. The rest of “Blame Game” will be out on Jan. 15.

Kyra is a culture writer for La Tonique.