Today is a great day to share the newest single from San Francisco-based electronic duo, Host Bodies, for their track called “Impossible Goodbyes.” The band is quickly making waves in the Bay Area and are poised and ready for their breakout moment. Host Bodies shared, “Something that will never get old is the feeling of driving back into San Francisco, whether that’s crossing the Golden Gate Bridge to the north or the Bay Bridge to the east. This song encapsulates that for me.” If you’re enjoying the new single, you can stream it on your favorite platform here.
“Impossible Goodbyes” feels rooted in a very specific moment—Ocean Beach, that garage piano, the Halcyon meetup—how did those physical spaces in San Francisco shape the emotional tone and sonic identity of the track?
SOMA and Ocean Beach are almost the polar opposites of San Francisco and we’ve always felt pulled between both. The clubs, the venues, the big sound systems, and busy nightlife are all on the east side of the city, while the west side where we’ve lived for over a decade has this foggy, windswept wildness about it that continues to inspire our songwriting. It’s almost magical how a quiet moment at an old piano in a dim garage not far from the beach can lead us back downtown to a big room full of flashing lights and heavy bass. On an emotional level, our process as a duo allows us to layer and weave complex vibes. If James plays a minor bassline, Nick might find a guitar riff of major chords and vice versa. There’s beauty in the sonic ambiguity, in music that honors the messiness of our emotional lives.
You’ve talked about not fitting neatly into techno or EDM spaces—especially with live guitar elements—do you see that “outsider” quality as a challenge, or has it become central to what makes Host Bodies stand out?
Our live set is engineered to captivate the audience with a blend of dance music and live instruments—that’s central to Host Bodies. The challenge is that so many dance music spaces are only available to DJs. They can show up with a USB, whereas we plug in two dozen cables, sound check a Les Paul, a synthesizer, even a mic for rapping. The live sets that inspired us coming up—STS9, Bonobo, Tycho, Maribou State, Ghostland Observatory—all crossed genres. We see ourselves in that lineage and have no intention of conforming.
The track captures nostalgia, loss, and movement all at once—when you’re building something meant for the dancefloor, how do you intentionally weave in that kind of emotional weight without losing momentum?
Intuition is a big part of our songwriting. Trusting that deep emotions lead us to beautiful music.We rarely craft anything with a specific end goal. Impossible Goodbyes came into its own during a studio jam session where we were firing on all gears: Nick tracking through his effects rig, James pulling in percussion and synth elements in a storm of creativity. We’ve been playing together since we were 12 or 13 years old. Magic happens when we make noise in the same room. And of course, the final touch is Count Eldridge’s incredible contribution as our mixing and mastering engineer. It’s such an honor to work with him.