HOT MULLIGAN is a ride-or-die testament to staying true to yourself. When the emo band formed in 2014 and cut their teeth playing house shows and naming songs by closing their eyes and typing into auto-correct on their phones, no one expected they’d be selling out thousand-cap venues, one of their scene’s most respected bands a decade later. But as Hot Mully readies their phenomenal fourth LP THE SOUND A BODY MAKES WHEN IT’S STILL (Wax Bodega), that’s exactly where they’re at. Hot Mulligan is a resounding success story, the #1 Hot New Band (11 years running, just ask them), and ready to keep fighting the good fight.

“I don’t know anyone in their right mind who says, I want to be a musician, make money, not have a job, and also be comfortable,” jokes guitarist Chris Freeman, thinking back to the band’s formative years in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and later, down in the mitten in the college town of Lansing. “The dream was to play a song in a shit basement, live in a van, be gross, sleep on French fries, and go to cities you’ve never been to before.”

Since 2018’s Pilot put Hot Mulligan on the map, they’ve been lauded in Paste and Alternative Press, streamed over 140 million times on Spotify, and toured with sonic forefathers like The Wonder Years and Jimmy Eat World. For Hot Mulligan—vocalist Tades Sanville, guitarists Freeman and Ryan Malicsi, bassist Jonah Kramer, and drummer Brandon Blakeley—the new LP is a white-knuckled affirmation of everything they stand for.

And make no mistake: it’s never been easy.

“The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still is a lyric reference,” says Sanville. “That lyric is in a song about paranoia, which is fear. With the album title, you can go the meditation route, or, the horror that you are in your body, and you have to exist. You have no choice, really. Even if you plan on killing yourself, right now you exist. And that is a terrifying thing.”

This fear lives and breathes throughout the album, in blistering choruses alongside the most vulnerable moments Hot Mulligan has ever laid to tape. On “Moving to Bed Bug Island,” a cathartic opener straight out of Hot Mully’s wheelhouse, Sanville is screaming for sanity huddled in a basement; by the album’s final song, the very-literally-titled “My Dad Told Me to Write a Nice One for Nana So This Is It,” he’s monologuing his last respects over acoustic guitar to the mother figure who helped raise him.

That being said, this is still a Hot Mulligan record, and that means it rocks. Lead single “And a Big Load” is a heroic pop-punk rager that spends its entire two minutes and 53 seconds outrunning the ghosts that chase it. “It Smells Like Fudge Axe in Here” reels you in with its emo-gone-Tokyo Police Club groove. “Carbon Monoxide Hotel” pairs some of the most emotional, raw-nerve lyrics Sanville has ever sung with a gutting breakdown and, somehow, one of the stickiest choruses in the Hot Mulligan catalog.

And even when life is beating you to the ground, Hot Mulligan resists the urge to take it all too seriously. The most challenging part of making the new album? According to the band, recording while crashing in places that smelled like chocolate Axe body spray and exhaust from a seafood kitchen. Second hardest, adds Freeman: “Getting our drummer to play the drums, because he just acquired mounts in World of Warcraft and wanted to play that instead.”

Through it all, Hot Mulligan and longtime producer Brett Romnes laid down a masterclass. The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still grabs your attention with all its fight-or-flight hooks, but it’s the little nuances and connective tissue that make it Hot Mulligan’s most cohesive album yet. There are gripping high notes from Sanville and subtle guitar twinkle and synthesizer sparkle that unfurl with every listen.There’s a pair of poignant interludes—“This Makes Me Yummy” and “This Makes Me Yucky”—with Sanville reading a dreamlike, half-audible short story down in the mix of the latter (it’s up to listeners to figure it out). “Slumdog Scungillionaire,” the penultimate track, weaves lyrics from throughout the LP into a soft-to-loud, time signature-shifter unlike anything the band has ever written. While records like 2020’s you’ll be fine and 2023’s Why Would I Watch hold up as classics, Hot Mulligan has never crafted a start-to-finish statement like this.

Their most accomplished LP in tow, Hot Mulligan is ready to venture on. Their 2025 plans include gigs at Bonnaroo and Slam Dunk Festival, a UK arena/stadium tour with Pierce the Veil, and of course, their own headlining tour. It’s all especially affirming to Hot Mulligan’s roots.

“When we started Hot Mulligan, the emo revival was going,” Freeman says, shouting out inspirations like You Blew It! and Modern Baseball. “We so desperately wanted to be a part of that, but by the time anyone would listen to songs called ‘11 Second Burp,’ most of those bands disappeared and we were out on our own. Even though we were born at the ass-end of that, we captured the sound a little.”

Now, bands who, like Hot Mulligan, never chased radio play or of-the-moment co-writers, are pushing sonic boundaries while playing sprawling festivals and raucous, packed club shows. “I’m proud that we didn’t go, Well, our music’s not here anymore, let’s write something else so we can ride the wave. We stuck to our guns.”