Weird Music Wednesday : “Stowaway” by Steel Beans

Feb 18, 2026

Today’s Weird Music Wednesday offering features a song that, in and of itself, is not weird at all… however, If you like your rock ‘n’ roll with a side of “What the fuzz is he doing?” and a main course of vintage swagger (rockin’ a Frank Zappa moustache, no less), then Steel Beans is your new favorite artist.

Everett, Washington’s musical Swiss Army Knife, Jeremy DeBardi, has finally funneled his chaotic, multi-instrumental energy into a self-titled statement piece: Steel Beans (Released in October 2025). For a man who built a career by viral necessity—singing, drumming, and shredding guitar simultaneously like a Victorian street performer—this record is a surprisingly polished evolution. It’s the sound of a garage-rock scientist realizing he’s been given the keys to the large hadron collider, and the results are predictably, explosive.

The album marks a significant shift in the Steel Beans trajectory. While previous efforts often felt like frantic dispatches from a man trying to outrun his own shadow, this most-recent self-titled release benefits from the professional “sheen” of Anderson .Paak’s APESHIT label. It’s less of a lo-fi experiment and more of a psychedelic-funk manifesto. DeBardi hasn’t abandoned his roots; he’s just invited a few more ghosts of 1970s rock into the room. The record bridges the gap between the raw “one-man-band” novelty and a legitimate studio powerhouse, proving that DeBardi’s songwriting can stand tall even when he isn’t sweating through a polyester suit on a TikTok feed.

The album, from the greasy funk of “Too On” to the tongue-in-cheek narcissism of “Sex With Your Own Shadow,” paints a picture of an artist who is finally comfortable being “unpolished in all the right ways.” DeBardi’s evolution is less about changing his sound and more about expanding his bandwidth. He’s gone from being a cult phenomenon to a genre-bending architect.

While the album offers plenty of groovy detours, the standout is “Stowaway.” It is the track that best justifies DeBardi’s hyper-independent recording style, serving as a one-man masterclass in building tension without the help of a backing band. “Stowaway” shines by leaning into a darker, more cinematic psych-rock territory that previous albums only flirted with. It avoids the “look at me” franticness of his viral hits, instead opting for a driving, hypnotic rhythm that feels like a high-speed chase through a neon-lit desert. The guitar work is particularly inspired here, trading simple blues licks for soaring, fuzzed-out melodies that suggest DeBardi has been spending as much time listening to Tame Impala as he has The Stooges. It’s the sound of an artist moving past the “gimmick” phase and into a space where the compositions are just as impressive as the execution.