Boy Harsher release lyric video for ‘Tough Luck (When You Don’t Call)’
Boy Harsher released a karaoke-style lyric video for “Tough Luck (When You Don’t Call)”, the third single from “Get Mean”, out 18 September on Atlantic.
Boy Harsher released a lyric video for “Tough Luck (When You Don’t Call)” on 26 August 2026, the third advance single from “Get Mean”, out 18 September 2026 on Atlantic Records. The Northampton duo of Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller follow “Jeans” and “Hard Beat” with a track built around a repeated “I’m OK” and the line “Do you even know my name?”.
Los Angeles video artist Sean McGuirk assembled the clip on vintage video gear, styling it as an analog karaoke screen: a CRT television, cold blue background, thick yellow capitals and visible scan lines, with cards reading “IN THE STYLE OF” and “INSTRUMENTAL BREAK”. Jesse Korman shot the footage at PropHaus Brooklyn.
What Boy Harsher put on ‘Get Mean’
The album runs twelve tracks: “Ronny”, “Jeans”, “Break Me”, “Tough Luck (When You Don’t Call)”, “Faulty”, “Coming Home”, “Hard Beat”, “Ice Pick (Walk Away)”, “Ivy’s Spiral”, “Pray 4 Me”, “Falling” and “Bleed”. Matthews and Muller recorded it across eight locations in the United States, Mexico and Italy, after Matthews wrote much of the material travelling through West Texas, the Pacific Northwest and South Florida. The pair ended their romantic relationship in early 2024 and the writing period also took in family loss.
Matthews has kept her description of the record short. She calls it “what I had to give during the most extreme period of my life.”
The sound picks up detuned pads, abrasive synth leads, pedal-steel bends, new wave guitar and unprocessed phone recordings. It is the duo’s first album since the 2022 short film and soundtrack “The Runner”.
Atlantic issues “Get Mean” on 140g black vinyl with a 12 x 24 inch poster, on an indie-exclusive blue marble pressing, on a Record Store Day blue variant and on CD. Pre-orders run through Bandcamp via Nude Club Records, the duo’s own imprint, and through record shops. Side-Line covered the signing and the album announcement in Boy Harsher signs to Atlantic Records, announces ‘Get Mean’.
The Heartbreak Tour reaches North America from 25 September and Europe and the UK from 14 November, closing in Antwerp on 4 December. Dates in Denver, Paris, Glasgow and Bristol have now sold out, joining the Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver and Los Angeles shows already gone. The full itinerary is listed in Boy Harsher announce ‘The Heartbreak Tour’ North American dates for 2026.
Matthews and Muller have also directed and scored a feature-length horror thriller, “The Lonely Woman”, with a cast including Chloë Sevigny, FKA twigs, Sturgill Simpson, Will Oldham and Jake Weary.
About Boy Harsher
Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller met at film school in Savannah, Georgia, and began working together in 2013 as Teen Dreamz, with Matthews performing spoken word over Muller’s backing. They took the name Boy Harsher in January 2014 and issued the home-recorded “Lesser Man” EP as a cassette.
DKA Records released their first album, “Yr Body Is Nothing”, in 2016, followed by the “Country Girl” EP in 2017 and singles including “Motion”, “Run” and “Face the Fire”. The pair founded their own label, Nude Club, in 2018 and reissued the back catalogue through it. “Pain II” arrived that year with a remix by The Soft Moon. The album “Careful” followed in 2019, with “Country Girl Uncut” and a remix set the same year. Side-Line rated “Careful” 8½ on release.
The duo relocated to Northampton, Massachusetts. In January 2022 they released “The Runner”, a short film starring Kristina Esfandiari that streamed on Shudder, together with its soundtrack and the “Burn It Down” EP. Festival appearances between 2022 and 2024 included Primavera Sound, Roadburn, Cruel World and Coachella, and in November 2024 they featured on the Pet Shop Boys double A-side “New London Boy / All The Young Dudes”. Muller also runs Safe Mind with Cooper B. Handy, whose album “Cutting the Stone” appeared on 25 July 2025.
Boy Harsher signed to Atlantic Records in July 2026. “Get Mean” is their first album for the label and their first full-length in four years.
Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!
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