The restlessly creative duo of Nate Amos and Rachel Brown, Water from Your Eyes make experimental pop that's as catchy as it is challenging and as witty as it is profound. Beginning as New Order acolytes, Brown and Amos gradually expanded their range, adding hints of folk, industrial, and Krautrock to 2019's Somebody Else's Song. The Brooklyn-via-Chicago duo made a critical and creative breakthrough with 2021's acclaimed Structure, which configured spoken word, danceable rhythms, lilting vocal melodies, and noisy synths into dizzying but heartfelt songs. With the avant-garde leanings and deadpan wit of 2023's Everyone's Crushed, Water from Your Eyes revealed more layers to their ever-changing music.

Brown, a class clown who once aspired to write for TV comedies and also performs as Thanks for Coming, and Amos, who had already played in over ten bands by the time he graduated high school and makes solo music as This Is Lorelei, met through Chicago's underground music scene and became a couple. They started Water from Your Eyes in mid-2016 on a whim after Amos introduced Brown to New Order's music. Initially conceiving of the project as a "sad dance band," the duo recorded its self-titled EP in a week while Brown was on break from their studies at New York University; Water from Your Eyes appeared on Grandpa Bay in August 2016. When the EP's percolating synth pop earned favorable reviews from blogs, Amos and Brown decided to continue Water from Your Eyes as a long-distance project. In April 2017, Sooper Records released the slightly more polished Long Days, No Dreams; that May, the III EP introduced a glitchier, sample-heavy aspect to the duo's sound; and August's Feels a Lot Like added jangly guitar pop to the mix.

After Amos joined Brown in Brooklyn in 2017, Water from Your Eyes were able to concentrate on their music and play shows. Their approach became more experimental on their third album and first for Exploding in Sound, January 2018's All a Dance. Written and recorded in two weeks, it featured rangy songs written from the perspectives of characters from movies including Gladiator and leaned into the hypnotic electronic rhythms underpinning their music. The duo pushed its boundaries further on its next album, October 2019's Somebody Else's Song. Two years in the making, it spanned folky pop and lengthy Motorik excursions as well as electronic pop and took inspiration from the work of artists ranging from Randy Newman to Scott Walker. Water from Your Eyes followed it with March 2020's 33:44 EP, a fusion of spoken word and industrial music, and January 2021's Somebody Else's Songs, a collection of cover songs including OMC's "How Bizarre" and Eminem's "Lose Yourself."

Before starting work on their fourth album, Brown and Amos ended their romantic relationship. The fallout of their breakup, as well as the immersive abstraction of Mark Rothko's paintings and Ween's tragicomic songwriting, shaped August 2021's Structure. Released by Wharf Cat, its mirrored halves consisted of vulnerable ballads, cathartic noise, surreal spoken word, and ecstatic electro pop, and the album earned Water from Your Eyes its widest-ranging praise to date. In 2022, Amos formed the project My Idea with Palberta's Lily Konigsberg; meanwhile, Water from Your Eyes toured with Pavement and Interpol, and signed to those bands' label, Matador, early the following year. In May 2023, Matador released Everyone's Crushed, a darkly humorous set of songs written before and during the making of Structure that deconstructed and reassembled dance music, modern composition, and classic rock influences. ~ Heather Phares