Without pomp or circumstance, Pittsburgh alternative band feeble little horse slyly dropped one of the most entertaining albums of 2026.
Their surprise release, bitknot, is an unpredictable, Y2K-bejewelled effort filled with sounds and samples evocative of 12 Tamagatchis rattling around a washing machine. Decidedly more electronic than their previous album, Girl with Fish, bitknot’s experimental nature is a collision of catchy pop, noise rock, shoegaze and an orchestra of cobweb-covered computers struggling to boot up.
It’s the band’s third full-length project and second offering under Omaha-based record label Saddle Creek Records, whose list of former signees include Rilo Kiley, Big Thief and early Bright Eyes. On June 25, I took I-80 West from Iowa’s largest city to Nebraska’s to put the screws to feeble little horse lead vocalist-slash-bassist Lydia Slocum and guitarist-slash-MPC player Sebastian Kinsler.
The pair of Pittsburgh natives sat staggered at the base of a fire escape outside the Slowdown, a popular Omaha concert venue and the spiritual headquarters of Saddle Creek. On their summer tour, which snaked its way through the South and up into the Midwest, they were without drummer Jake Kelley, who hung back in Pennsylvania to work with his other band, The Draft.
When I asked what prompted bitknot’s sudden, seemingly spontaneous arrival, Kinsler cited the man upstairs. He meant it literally — it was Saddle Creek that suggested it.
“It was just floated upstairs. And Robb said, ‘Do you want to just put it out?’" recounted Kinsler, referring to Saddle Creek co-founder and president Robb Nansel. “We said ‘Yeah, we can just put it out,' because we're lucky enough to have an audience already. So singles wouldn't — I don't feel like singles do much. If you don't need to build an audience to get someone to listen to your album, you can just do it. It’s really lucky.”
feeble little horse has amassed a substantial following since forming in 2021, giving them the freedom to do as they please, and so they did. The band forwent a traditional rollout, giving fans a business week's notice before dropping the album on May 26.
bit-yes!
Although it sounds convincingly like a unit of measurement for voltage or a component part of a motherboard, bitknot is not a real word. That it inspires such imagery, though, is proof of its efficacy. The album is chock full of haptics, glitches, buzzes and fuzzes pulled from the abyss of the internet.
“It just feels right to find the more humanness in the computer, because it's such a permanent part of our lives,” said Slocum. “You might as well find something about it that has character and life to it, and it's also fun to pick around in the recent garbage.”
feeble little horse turned internet garbage into treasure across 11 frenetic and captivating tracks. If selecting just one favorite off the album proves difficult, don’t worry, the songwriters are in the same boat.
“I think ‘Upside Down’ was a favorite for me,” said Slocum.
“Yeah,” Kinsler agreed, “that song’s fye.”
“And ‘Dior,’” added Slocum. “And ‘Doorway.’”
“My favorite’s ‘Poison,’” said Kinsler.
“Oh and ‘Poison,’” Slocum concurred. “We just love it.”
Their 'fye' track, “Upside Down,” is perhaps the album’s best vibe. “Upside Down” is very synthy, very poppy and very much in the vein of Passion Pit. The interplay between drummer Kelley finding the perfect pocket and Slocum’s bubbly auto-tune is a joy. Slocum and Kinsler admitted that the song was inspired somewhat by Drake, particularly the line “that butterfly was my mistake.” If that track's not your cup of tea, the album's final track, "DMT," builds to a noise-plagued finale where Slocum's vocals verge on screamo like never before.
In five months, “Dior” has become one of bitknot’s most popular songs. It begins with a familiar laid back tempo and Slocum’s subdued vocals, mixed with capital-H Heavy guitar. Two-thirds of the way through the song shifts. The pace picks up and Slocum’s pitch rises, resulting in a sort of Teen Titans anime intro theme. Clocking in at a little over 3 minutes and 30 seconds, “Dior” is also the band’s longest song ever. It plays out like a game of romantic cat and mouse that leaves you wanting to know more. Good luck identifying the names in the song, though, the band is tight-lipped.
“Girl! It’s a bleep for a reason,” said Slocum.
“It’s good to ask,” offered Kinsler with a shrug.
The pair’s songwriting process has opened up since their last record. On Girl with Fish, Slocum mostly brought fully-written lyrics to the table and “fine-tuned in the room with Seb.” But for bitknot, the air of collaboration was fresh, and the pair worked “back and forth” in the room.
“I think most of it comes from my brain,” said Slocum, “I’ll just spit out a million things and then eventually we’ll kind of narrow it down.”
“[Lydia comes] up with the idea for what the song’s about,” said Kinsler. “And I help figure out how to make it work as a song.”
Iowa of all places
Presently, there’s one unattributed sentence on feeble little horse’s Wikipedia page that sticks out like a sore thumb. It reads simply, “feeble little horse played their first official public live show back in Ames, Iowa on February 17, 2024.” But why?
When I asked for details about their hiatus, Slocum and Kinsler wouldn't play ball. feeble little horse briefly broke up during their 2023 summer tour before reuniting, sans guitarist Ryan Walchonski. As for why they chose to consummate their next chapter of bandhood in Ames, over 700 miles away from home? Well, that remains a mystery as well.
Booked by Iowa State University's student-run alternative radio station, 88.5FM KURE, feeble little horse accepted the invite to headline KURE Fest at ISU’s famously ornate, chapel-like venue, The Maintenance Shop. Warming up the stage for the Pittsburghers were two bands from Des Moines: the hard rock four-piece Display Case and the screwball gang of multi-instrumentalists Hot Kunch.
Unlike Slocum, whose first show back was marred by gastrointestinal distress and an onstage mishap concerning her childhood bass, Kinsler’s core memory of KURE Fest was a positive, funky one.
“I remember the opening band [Hot Kunch] playing a pitch perfect rendition of ‘September,’” said Kinsler, praising the Iowa act’s Earth, Wind & Fire cover. “It was so spot on that I thought it was playing through the speakers. But it was them. It was tight.”
Slocum, on the other hand, wasn't paying much attention to the openers. She was dealing with some debilitating dairy distress.
“I almost threw up before [the show] because I ate some crazy cheese,” said Slocum, whose troubles didn’t stop there. “And then my bass wasn't working. That was the last night I ever played with my first bass. It stopped working. It just stopped working completely. Got through the show, though.”
In spite of the horrors, Slocum remembered something from that evening that made her smile; Kinsler seemed to recall it at the same time. They both snickered, refusing to elaborate.
Seb’s side projects / Sword II
During the band’s interregnum, Kinsler couldn’t just sit still. If a day ended in ‘Y,’ it was a good day to make music.
“Well, I always write songs,” said Kinsler. “You're not gonna not write songs. Like, what? You're gonna not write a song?”
Hiatus saw Kinsler’s stack of self-written songs pile up, so, he started a solo project called find my friends, which resulted in an EP release. The self-titled EP find my friends is for the DJs and producers. The project leans hard into Kinsler’s interests in dubstep, trance and hip-hop. And at just 16 minutes long, it packs a lot of crazy ideas and instrumentals into its short runtime.
Kinsler’s mixing skills were enlisted by Atlanta indie trio Sword II, who met and toured with feeble little horse near the end of 2024. The DIY-ers started getting spins on Studio One after the release of their 2025 album Electric Hour, which Kinsler had a hand in shaping.
“I mixed all the songs,” said Kinsler, excluding "Who's Giving You Love?." “Some of them, I did a little arranging, a little bit of slicing, a little bit of, you know, shake it up.”
With Electric Hour and now bitknot, Kinsler's touched two of the best alternative records of the last two years.
Keep up with feeble little horse
In an ironic twist of fate, feeble little horse had to cut yet another tour short — this time it wasn't really their decision. Kinsler broke his elbow in a biking incident in late September and the band was forced to postpone their October tour of the U.S. and Canada. There are 11 dates on the group's upcoming reroute scheduled for January.
Despite the North America tour setback, the band is planning to tackle Europe in November, with already sold-out shows in London and Manchester.
The best way to keep up with all things feeble little horse is their website, which is, as one would expect, early 2000s as hell. Together, Slocum and her graphic designer friend Dimwit — whose crusty, outdated and blindingly colorful digital art style perfectly complements the sonics of bitknot — pay homage to the adolescent age of the internet.
Slocum's own artistic talents can be seen plastered across all feeble little horse's visual endeavors as well. She designs the band's graphics, merch, illustrations, various little guys (like that bug from their one-off single, "This Is Real") and serves as creative director for all their campy music videos.
