Hippo Campus have returned with the new song “Semi Pro.” Their new album, LP3, will be out in February.
Today, Hippo Campus release “Semi Pro,” the second single off their upcoming third studio album LP3, out Feb 4 2022 via Grand Jury Music. The track features searing, sunlight-tinged synth lines and contemplative, self-aware lyrics. It's accompanied by a baseball themed video directed by Phillip Soulliere, shot at the home field of Minnesota Twins’ minor league team, St. Paul Saints, starring frontman Jake Luppen as the burnt out slugger on team Hippos. "Semi Pro" is about the liberation that comes from making peace with stepping away and recognizing the ways that you are tied to your craft can really mess with your head. “Semi Pro” follows their enthralling first single, “Boys;” a track about the romantic nature of memorializing one’s own ephemerality. “Boys” and “Semi Pro” are preceded by EP Good Dog, Bad Dream. The five intense tracks, tinged with confessions of dark humor bridge their new sound with LP3 in what the band describes as a sonic purge, making way for a brand new era of their music. On the track, Luppen says, “When the chips are down, playing a guitar is not really worth anything. It took a global pandemic and falling in love to help me find an identity outside of music and in that I finally feel free as an artist.” What Hippo Campus wanted with LP3 was something all five of them could agree on, the way they’d made music in the early days of the band when they were in high school. As their profile grew, amassing nearly ¾ of a billion streams, they found themselves compromising on their visions, thinking about how fans would interact with their music, and plagued by an unsustainable industry ecosystem. LP3 is their strongest and most complete work yet -- a freshly-inked portrait excavating young adulthood and identity and, more importantly, how that personal identity fits into a larger camaraderie. It looks at how growing up can just feel like something that’s always moving past you when you’re trying to grab a hold of it; it’s a push-and-pull of letting go or holding tighter -- and figuring out what matters the most. Through cinematic, sonic clarity, is a sweeping account of courage and tenacity; tender-hearted stumbling that leads you on the right path after all.