Getting Killed is the fourth studio album by the American rock band Geese, released on September 26, 2025, on Partisan Records and Play It Again Sam. The album marked the band's first release as a quartet following the departure of guitarist Foster Hudson in late 2023 to pursue academia. It was recorded in January 2025, one month after the release of frontman Cameron Winter's debut solo album, Heavy Metal (2024), at producer Kenneth Blume's Putnam Hill studio in Los Angeles.
Musically, it is categorised as an art rock, indie rock, and experimental rock album. The album was shaped by extended jam sessions and an emphasis on rhythmic repetition, abrasive textures, and unconventional song structures. Winter's vocal performance is a prominent feature, ranging from restrained crooning to strained, expressive outbursts, while the lyrics employ surreal imagery and recurring themes of violence, power, and transformation.
The album was preceded by the singles "Taxes", "Trinidad", and "100 Horses", and further supported by the singles "Cobra" and "Au Pays du Cocaine", and a headlining tour beginning in October 2025. It received critical acclaim, and was named among the best albums of 2025 by several publications, with The New Yorker and Stereogum placing it at number one. Commercially, it charted at number 96 on the Billboard 200, and topped the UK Independent Albums Chart.
Background Following the release of their third album 3D Country (2023), Geese transitioned from a quintet to a quartet. The departure of guitarist Foster Hudson was formally announced on 22 December 2023, attributed to his decision to pursue academic work, leaving frontman Cameron Winter, guitarist Emily Green, bassist Dominic DiGesu, and drummer Max Bassin as the band's core members. With Hudson gone, Winter assumed a larger share of the guitar arrangements on the new material. DiGesu and Green later described the lineup change as a motivating factor that compelled them to refine their collaborative approach.
Geese's collaboration with producer Kenneth Blume, Kenny Beats, began informally in mid-2024, when Blume encountered the band's merchandise and became curious about their work. The two met at the Austin City Limits Music Festival in October 2024, where Blume expressed an enthusiasm for leaving imperfections intact—an attitude Winter regarded as a rare and liberating approach for a rock-adjacent producer. Geese spent several days that November at Putnam Hill, Blume's newly built studio in Los Angeles, to develop preliminary demos. Blume initially found the material structurally chaotic, though his view shifted after hearing a solo project Winter released later that year, which clarified the songs' internal logic and convinced him of the project's potential.
The release of Winter's solo album Heavy Metal on December 6, 2024 generated an unexpected impact of critical attention. Despite modest expectations from the label, the album became a cult success and was acclaimed for its songwriting and vocal experimentation. Its reception drew new attention to Geese's work and heightened anticipation for their next release. He later stated that the success of the solo album increased his confidence and informed his intention to make Getting Killed a louder and more forceful record than its predecessor.
Recording and production
Recording took place in January 2025 at the Putnam Hill studio, and Getting Killed was produced by the band itself alongside Kenneth Blume. The overall process was recorded over a ten-day period, with the band working fourteen-hour days while the Southern California wildfires filled the Los Angeles air with smoke and ash. Winter described the process as a "waking nightmare until it's mastered", and the band arrived with around twenty demos that were often incomplete, forcing them to write, restructure, and refine material in real time. Much of the album emerged from extended thirty-minute jam sessions centered on repetitive grooves, which Bassin characterized as explorations of patterns that "feel almost like they don't end".
Blume, who is known for his work in hip-hop, informed an emphasis on the rhythm section, resulting in Bassin's drumming operating in what Under the Radar writer Mark Moody called "maximum overdrive" and in bass and drum performances being tracked repeatedly until they could support the album's more experimental textures. The production also incorporated deliberately abrasive or unconventional elements across the album. The group spent one session selecting a single handclap sample from a folder of roughly 7,000 options, an example they later noted had briefly delayed completion of the associated song. Winter's vocal recording process swung between extremes, with some takes captured immediately and others requiring more than forty attempts in order to push his voice into the desired emotionally frayed state.
Musical style
Overview Getting Killed has been described by journalists as art rock, indie rock, and experimental rock with additional elements and influences including jazz, no wave funk, progressive rock, noise music, and motorik-inspired rhythmic patterns. The album consists of eleven tracks with a total running time of 45 minutes. The compositions rely on cyclical rhythmic figures, recurrent motifs, and definitive structures that unfold gradually rather than toward conventional hook-driven climaxes. Winter's vocal performance has been described as a central element to the band's sound. His delivery ranges from soft baritone crooning to strained, cracking shouts, drawing occasional comparisons to Thom Yorke of Radiohead and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. The lyrics are dense and allusive, combining biblical imagery and surreal or absurd scenarios.
Songs The opening track "Trinidad" establishes the album's volatile and chaotic tone, featuring the uncommon time signature of . It features jagged guitars, explosive percussion, erratic bursts of brass, and layers of discordant noise. Critics compared the sound to "Radiohead on PCP" or a funk ensemble pushed into noise-rock extremes. Winter's vocals alternate between languid phrasing and sharp, shrieking outbursts. The refrain, "There's a bomb in my car!", forms one of the album's most memorable lines, and the Australian musician Nick Cave remarked that the shift into the chorus creates a moment in which "all worry is laid to waste". "Cobra" introduces a more melodic and relaxed atmosphere. Its breezy textures recall a Beach Boys-adjacent palette, while Winter's vocals adopt a crooning tone that Holly Hazelwood of Spectrum Culture interpreted as evidence of his potential as a "neo-crooner". The song blends interlocking guitar melodies and nostalgia with an attempt to subvert pop conventions. "Husbands" is built on a steady, metronomic drum pattern and supple guitar lines reminiscent of the John Frusciante period of Red Hot Chili Peppers. It incorporates elements of gospel-inflected harmony, extended groove-based structure, and R&B-tinged lo-fi production. The track conveys a sense of being burdened by a city for which there remains affection, as reflected in Winter's line "I'll repeat what I say, but I'll never explain".
The title track "Getting Killed" begins with an upbeat, crunchy rhythm before resolving into a more settled groove. It features a blues-derived guitar line and a sampled Ukrainian choral passage described by Rachel Aroesti of The Guardian as a "frantic pile-up of voices and grooves". Writing for Exclaim!, Eric Hill likened the song's character to a "Julian Casablancas-fronted Black Crowes". "Islands of Men" opens with a steady bass figure and gradually develops its warm atmosphere over six minutes. The track has been described as swaying boogie rock that transitions into something more ethereal as it proceeds. "100 Horses", a rapid, high-energy piece built on repetitive, militant grooves, leans heavily into funk-inflected rhythm and percussive force. Bassin's drumming dominates the arrangement, and Winter's lyrics engage in a "pantomime of American imperialism", with lines such as "There is only dance music in times of war" and "All people must die scared or else die nervous" linking the track to the album's broader critique of violence and power. "Half Real" evokes a Tom Waits-like preacherly tone and draws on a bar-room atmosphere marked by drones reminiscent of the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs". Winter's vocal performance leans into a spoken-sung delivery as he contemplates extreme personal erasure: "I've got half a mind, to just pay for the lobotomy... I've got no more thinking to do".
Described by MusicOMH John Murphy as of the album's most subdued tracks, "Au Pays du Cocaine" adopts a gentle, swaying mood and highlights Winter's baritone, rendered in a manner akin to a post-punk crooner. Its melodic structure recalls a folk lullaby. The lyrics address a reluctant partner with lines such as "You can be free and still come home" and "Baby you can change and still choose me". "Bow Down" reintroduces a dense, energetic style, characterized by a sharp guitar-and-drum interlock and a rhythmic language described by Murphy as "jerky math-rock". The track reshapes a staccato riff into an off-kilter dance figure. Winter addresses transformation and shifting identity through metaphors such as "I was a sailor, and now I'm a boat... I was a car, and now I'm the road", giving the song a chant-like quality that reinterprets elements of the band's earlier post-punk style. "Taxes" is constructed around a polyrhythmic introduction that abruptly opens into wide, chiming guitar arrangements. The track has been described as a cathartic rock anthem, with Winter's vocals combining desperation and melodic clarity. The lyrics incorporate biblical references and bleak humor, exemplified by "If you want me to pay my taxes / You'd better come over with a crucifix / You're gonna have to nail me down". "Long Island City Here I Come" builds in intensity and volume. The final section features Winter's voice gradually receding into a stream-of-consciousness monologue involving images such as "Microphones hidden under your bed" and apocalyptic anxieties.
Artwork The cover features Green in a white dress, her appearance being obfuscated by a lens flare. In her right hand is a trumpet held closely to her face, while the left hand holds a revolver pointed directly at the camera. The image was shot on photographer Mark Sommerfeld's rooftop in Ridgewood, Queens with additional editing by Kyle Berger to position the sun correctly. The cover for Getting Killed has been compared to the cover for Vision Creation Newsun by Japanese band Boredoms. Creative director Phil Gibson said that he was inspired by depictions of death in paintings by artists Sascha Schneider and Thomas Cole, as well as in movies like The Seventh Seal. The direction of the album art also came from playing around with the title of Getting Killed.
Release