WATERPARKS DROP NEW SINGLE
Photo: Gracie Knight
Today marks a major milestone for Waterparks as the trio unveils their brand new single, ‘BETTER THAN THERAPY’, offering a brilliant taste of what is to come from their highly anticipated sixth studio album, JINX, which arrives on July 24th via BMG.
“Here’s the thing,” confesses Awsten Knight. “I actually haven’t been to therapy in a couple years and I think it’s catching up with me..."
At its absolute core, ‘Better Than Therapy’ serves as a witty, tongue-in-cheek celebration of discovering a partner who truly understands every facet of your personality, flaws included. Packed to the brim with self-aware humour, deeply infectious hooks, and a healthy dose of emotional chaos, the track brilliantly captures the messy comfort of traversing life's ups and downs next to someone who is just as wonderfully imperfect as you are.
Waterparks have long mastered the art of writing definitive, era-defining anthems. Every creative chapter they deliver arrives emotionally precise, sonically distinct, and meticulously color-coded before organically giving way to the next. Over the course of the past decade, this exact methodology has propelled the trio, comprising Awsten Knight, Geoff Wigington, and Otto Wood, into one of modern rock’s most vibrant, shapeshifting success stories. Their impressive track record speaks for itself: 1 billion catalog streams, a No. 1 Alternative Album in the U.S., Top 10 albums on both sides of the Atlantic, non-stop social media buzz, and a permanent fixture on alternative magazine covers worldwide.
Yet, cold statistics have never been the primary motivation for this band. Waterparks have always chosen to measure their success in far less tangible ways. For them, true achievement lives within the profound connection forged between artist and audience, whether they are headlining intimate theatres, commanding massive festival stages, or supporting My Chemical Romance on a sold-out arena tour. It is found entirely within the sheer ambition of the art itself, constantly forcing the questions: Does what they’re making matter? Is this art, this music, consistently exciting, challenging, and overwhelmingly alive?
This relentless commitment to creative evolution firmly places Waterparks in a lineage rather than a standard genre category. Mirroring the longest-lasting acts to emerge from the alternative ecosystem, bands whose careers are best understood as an ongoing sequence of reinvention rather than linear, predictable progress, they remain deeply rooted in the culture that raised them while adamantly coloring far beyond its established boundaries. Their sonic identity effortlessly absorbs scale, theatricality, intimacy, chaos, and clarity without any sense of hierarchy, proving that eclecticism is a genuine way of life.
Ultimately, Waterparks operates as a living document of precisely who the band members were at the exact moment each song surfaced. Knight’s immersive world-building draws sharp lines between beginnings and endings with near-architectural precision. Each distinct era is defined clearly by sound and image, sometimes stretching right down to the vibrant hue of his hair. JINX, serving as the sixth full-length chapter in their constantly evolving musical journey, stands as an unparalleled achievement.
The band consistently looks forward instead of backward, ensuring every single step acts as a testament to life and forward motion. That distinct forward tilt has become the band’s defining trait, even as their dedicated fanbase grows large enough to deeply romanticize the past. Their biggest streaming hits to date, ‘I Miss Having Sex But At Least I Don’t Wanna Die Anymore’ (2019) and ‘Stupid for You’ (2016), present a stark contrast in both sonic texture and emotional dynamics. It is proof that Waterparks gladly take major creative risks without ever sacrificing gigantic melodic hooks. Much like the most transcendent lifers in music history, from Queen to Madonna to Fall Out Boy, Waterparks thrive by evolving much faster than expectations can catch them, curating career-spanning setlists that balance these diverse eras cohesively.
When you ask Awsten Knight why the current moment necessitated a completely new artist bio, he doesn’t pause to talk about legacy. Instead, he speaks passionately about velocity. “That’s where I like to live,” he says. “I like to put Waterparks in the future.”
That overarching philosophy directly guided the creation of ‘JINX’, the band’s sixth full-length album and undeniably the most deliberately constructed chapter of their entire career. Rather than continuing along an expected, safe trajectory, Waterparks consciously chose total disruption. They deliberately left behind familiar creative routines, restructured their internal working relationships, and completely changed the physical environment in which the album took shape. In fact, ‘JINX’ exists in the wake of a massive decision to walk away from a nearly completed version of their sixth album, choosing instead to tear it down and rebuild the entire project from scratch. “I operate on instinct,” Knight says. “If something doesn’t feel right, I’ll abandon it.”
Acclaimed producer Zakk Cervini (5 Seconds of Summer, Bring Me The Horizon), who previously produced FANDOM (2019) and co-produced Greatest Hits (2021) alongside INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (2023), returned to the fold to work on JINX.
They also struck up a brand new, highly collaborative creative partnership with Nick Zinnanti. This prompted them to leave the familiar comforts of Los Angeles behind in favour of the producer/songwriter’s unique Long Island studio, a space that felt less like a standard workplace and more like a surreal art installation, filled to the brim with themed rooms, odd artifacts, and visual noise.
But that intense physical immersion and the constant back-and-forth travel proved to be deeply catalytic rather than distracting. Knight describes the writing process as one of rigorous testing rather than simple accumulation, constantly interrogating songs until they fully revealed whether they possessed the strength to exist completely outside their moment of creation, much like his own personal favourite records.
“When I was really young, I could hear a song and just know if it was special,” he says. “It has to be timeless, or I don’t want it.”
‘TELL ME WHY’ sets the album in motion with cinematic flair while maintaining an intense emotional intimacy. The track unravels a striking story of death, purgatory, confrontation, and return, all securely anchored by the poignant chorus: “If the only point of life is not to die, can you tell me why?” Casting the various roles of God, the Devil, and others for the track combined pure wish fulfillment with genuine creative serendipity.
“It feels like a magic trick,” marvels Knight. “Grand, gothic, dramatic, industrial; a perfect mixture.”
That deliberate juxtaposition runs heavily throughout the tracklist of JINX, with each individual song boldly asserting its own purpose rather than quietly blending into a single palette. ‘PROWLER’ serves as a poignant study in isolation and reckoning, capturing the feeling of being completely unmoored and learning to live within that heavy discomfort rather than trying to outrun it. ‘RED GUITAR’ snaps instantly in the opposite direction, arriving confrontational, hyper-present, and armed with swaggering hooks. Moving forward, ‘IF LYRICS WERE CONFIDENTIAL’ expertly weaponises humour, folding cutting internal commentary into a track that thrives on sonic tension. ‘ANY MINUTE NOW’ slows the frame down entirely, turning vulnerability and quiet reflection into pure atmosphere, where its deliberate restraint functions beautifully as its own form of intensity. Even at its absolute most aggressive or surreal, JINX remains incredibly tightly composed, proving its chaos is never accidental but always carefully arranged.
“This album came from so many versions of me,” Knight observes, with a knowing laugh. “There’s, like, ten versions of me on it, looking back. Like, ‘Damn, we had the whole crew here.’”
That exact internal multiplicity has always defined the core of Waterparks. The band constantly thrives in the natural tension between charm and abrasion, sincerity and irreverence, building songs that possess the rare ability to disarm an audience just as quickly as they hit.
It is a beautiful balance that effectively runs across all six of their albums thus far. With each passing era, the stakes are raised significantly. The creative scope widens, the ideas become sharper, and the band keeps moving forward, effortlessly running faster than expectations can ever settle around them.
“My creative competition is me,” Knight says. “And I’m hard to beat.”
