A cultural backlash-induced luddite movement was bound to happen. On Instagram, the product I get advertised to me the most is a hunk of plastic that locks you out of whatever apps you tell it to. "Analog bags" stuffed with screen-free activities has become a rising trend among young adults. In a time where the pope writes an Encyclical rebuking the technocrats of Silicon Valley and their sweeping AI aspirations, it feels obvious young creative types are desperate to turn back the clock.

Pittsburgh's feeble little horse aren't full luddites, though. While their only promo for their third LP bitknot (out today) was some fan-volunteer street teaming, there are parts of the internet that still light their eyes up. "I just wanted to find a way to play on the internet that's not so destructive and vapid. Because I think the internet's great. But the way we use it is not great," frontwoman Lydia Slocum told me.

The desire for play peeks through Slocum's disillusioned lamentations throughout bitknot, be it sonic or visual. Take the billionaire-mocking closer "DMT," a double entendre for the drug and an acronym of what the band describes as "the harbingers of our late capitalist hell": death, money, tech. To usher in an outro of Slocum fighting with fuzzed out guitars to list out those harbingers like a mantra, they sample a three-year-old TikTok-turned-tour-in-joke.

In an homage to the decentralized version of the internet that the band fell in love with growing up, their newly remodeled website was inspired by GeoCities and the depths of the Internet Archives. Like their friends in Asheville's Wednesday (who Slocum has designed merch for), feeble little horse yearn for a time when the internet showcased our creativity and identity as opposed to the rigidity of social media's (un)written rules.

The track "Shopping" comes as a cautionary tale: "I’m scrolling but I bet you’re better IRL / I copy paste your pose / I hope you couldn’t tell / I’m watching my own story / I’m a TV show / And when I’m shopping / I’m thinking about your clothes," Slocum admits in the song's first verse.

She wouldn't tell me who the "you" in question was, but she found deleting Instagram to be a catch-all solution to her comparative tendencies. "I found my own style," she said. "I was like, 'oh, wow, that was easy.' But I still copy. It's so fun to copy."

Slocum's latest style adventure manifested in the freshly chopped pixie cut that she debuted on our call. Guitarist Sebastian Kinsler hyped her up when she logged on, shouting "Haircut! Haircut!"

"You caught me on a day in between. I got a cut, and then tomorrow I'm getting it bleached. This is my exclusive brunette sneak peak," Slocum joked. The pixie was copied off of the late Jael Strauss' iconic makeover on America's Next Top Model. "They chopped all her hair – messed up her hair really bad. But she looks so good. And I was like, 'I kind of want to look like Jael,'" she explained.

In a similarly bold move, bitknot comes with five days' notice and no singles. "We were at dinner with Rob, the owner of Saddle Creek. We're all enjoying delicious food and wine and he was like, 'guys, I don't need to do singles. Let's just drop this whole thing,'" Slocum said of the decision. She cited her own listening habit of skipping pre-release singles when listening to new albums to justify the truncated rollout. They've been test-driving a handful of bitknot tracks during recent live dates, treating those as the de facto singles.

Kinsler echoed her sentiments, saying, "I also saw like a bunch of bands that we like almost like ruin their albums by doing single releases that are three months out. And then by the time the album comes out, you've heard half of the songs versus rappers that are just like 'my album's out.'" He invoked Playboi Carti surprise dropping Whole Lotta Red on Christmas as an example, but that's far from the only thing feeble little horse borrows from the hip hop and pop worlds.

The record's shortest song "Upside Down" sees Kinsler's biggest vocal contribution since feeble's earliest days. His autotune-dipped delivery evokes the bouncy, laid-back energy of late 2010s pop and R&B – like a Zoomer's take on Post Malone's "Sunflower."

Slocum dances through telling off an old fling on "Dior," modeling her melodies and delivery off of blinged-out, early-career Kesha (complete with a sassy ad-libbed "yeah"). She takes the track's final leg to throw some shade at the indie douchebag in question, taunting "You are not David Berman / You are not Kurt Cobain."

While bitknot is feeble little horse's poppiest album yet, the loud, pedal-heavy guitar work (specifically on "Doorway" and "DMT") that placed them on tours with modern shoegaze stalwarts TAGABOW and Horse Jumper of Love. If anything, feeble little horse are proud of their loudness. When I asked how they would have faired in the '90s loudness wars, Kinsler perked up and replied, "Oh, dude, we would've been the loudest. The loudness wars were great. They were good for music. The quietest part of your song should still be clipping."

Regardless of their sound, feeble little horse's rocker instincts are evergreen. Slocum attributes the Pittsburgh DIY scene as "...a huge reason why we're successful." She continued, "I think we started being a band at a time when COVID was just kind of starting to break down a bit and people would go to shows. I think that made people around us really excited and supportive and ready and willing hear new things."

The past few years have seen DIY scenes across the country rebuild from the ground up post-COVID, and it seems to have filtered out the poser population as a result. "Everyone's always been absurdly nice," Kinsler attested. Slocum co-ran and designed fliers for the now-defunct Hammer House. While the shows themselves have been much-needed safe havens for young music lovers to build community, many would not have found their way in were it not for social media.

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The band does what they can to stay involved with the scene even with the limitations of their rising national profile: playing a secret set at a sweaty, malfunction-ridden basement show last year, for example. Their ear remains to the ground too, with Kinsler shouting out forty winks and Gaadge as local bands he's excited about.

bitknot follows up feeble's breakout record Girl with Fish, but the band agreed its rapturous reception made bitknot's creation much more carefree. "I feel like we really had to win people over with Girl with Fish. And now it's like, well, I hope you still like us," Slocum said. Kinsler added, "It kind of felt like we had to prove something, but now I feel like we've proved it and we can just make songs."

Even with the eased pressure, feeble little horse are tighter and bolder than ever.

bitknot is out now via Saddle Creek.