SMILE releases video for new single ‘Gotta Run’
Cologne post-punk band SMILE has released “Gotta Run,” a new single with an official video, its first new material since “Hot Friend” in 2025.
Cologne post-punk band SMILE released the official video for new single “Gotta Run” on October 20, 2026. The track is the group’s first new material since “Hot Friend,” issued in February 2025.
“Gotta Run” was written by vocalist Rubee Fegan with guitarists Lars Fritzsche and Sebastian Lessel, bassist Max Schmidt and drummer Marius Szarnych. Olaf Opal recorded and mixed the track, with additional mixing by Fritzsche and engineering by Luis Müller-Wallraf. Norman Nitzsche handled mastering. The song moves at a brisk tempo, built on tight, driving drums, a rolling bassline and two interlocking guitar parts under Fegan’s near-spoken vocal delivery. The band describes the track as being about leaving a violent system and reckoning afterward with what it taught the body.
SMILE’s official video for the song went up the same day on YouTube. “Gotta Run” is available as a digital single on Bandcamp.
About SMILE
SMILE formed in Cologne, Germany, when Rubee Fegan, Lars Fritzsche, Sebastian Lessel, Max Schmidt and Marius Szarnych began writing together as friends during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fegan, an American vocalist, fronts the band and also oversees its visual style. The group released its debut album, “I Hate It Here,” in January 2022. A standalone single, “Doohickey,” followed in July 2023, ahead of the band’s second album, “Price of Progress,” released that October through the Vienna label Siluh Records and produced by Olaf Opal.
SMILE has played alongside acts including Fontaines D.C. on the Skinty Fia Tour in August 2022, Squid in Cologne in September 2023, and Touché Amoré across three German dates in February 2025. The band released the single “Hot Friend” in February 2025 before returning on October 20, 2026, with “Gotta Run” and its official video, its first new music since that single.
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