“I can tell that your fun is counterfeit,” sings Nolan Jakupovski on the opening track off Something We All Got, the new album from Cootie Catcher. “You don’t loiter for the love of it.”
It’s an endearing accusation that immediately makes clear the Toronto band’s priorities: playfulness, earnestness, hanging out and messing around with your friends. The goal here is fun, not some imagined outcome of money or success. But the lines are less vicious call-out and more matter-of-fact mission statement: if this is not your deal, you can find somewhere else to take up space.
Something We All Got — or, in another hint that the band doesn’t take itself too seriously, S.W.A.G. — is the second full-length LP in as many years from Cootie Catcher. The quartet picked up buzz following the release of 2025’s Shy at First, a sample-driven indie pop record that landed them a deal with American indie Carpark Records.
Marking the band’s first studio recordings, the album moves them slightly away from the upbeat, stitched-together sonics — sometimes referred to as “laptop twee” — that characterized their previous effort. The focus here is on clanging guitars and heart-on-sleeve lyrics. Jakupovski shares lead vocals with Anita Fowl and Sophia Chavez, and there’s a youthful honesty that serves as a throughline amongst them. “Do you wanna take my hand in marriage / let’s never look back,” sings Chavez on “Lyfestyle,” recalling the sweet naivety of “Archie, Marry Me,” by Toronto indie greats Alvvays.
Like that band, Cootie Catcher have a knack for blending the optimism and melancholy of young adulthood; “I’ll take what I can get / even if it’s not all I ever wanted,” Fowl admits in a lovely, wistful melody on “Straight Drop.” But there are still plenty of squiggling production antics here — melted, drooping metallics and vinyl scratching score the outro of “No Biggie,” while a whistle and a cowbell punctuate “Puzzle Pop.”
Cootie Catcher could be called an internet band — they got together from a distance during the pandemic, and their production taps into the glitchy information overload of online life. But on Something We All Got, they also evoke a strong sense of place, singing about falling asleep on the subway, or asking someone not to fall out of touch during the winter. Listening to it, I picture a kid in a hoodie snoozing on the Bloor line, or teenagers hanging out by a College St. convenience store in November, luxuriating in the last breaths of fall.
Grounded yet adventurous, S.W.A.G. is the kind of album that makes you want to shoot the shit with its creators, and announces Cootie Catcher as a torchbearer for Gen Z indie in Canada. The songs sound like a host of ideas yanked out of the ether, but also the organic product of four people in a room together, letting band practice run long, loitering for no other reason than because they love it.