Cocoon

There's something almost physically adhesive about "Cocoon" — it wraps itself around you and doesn't let go. Catfish and the Bottlemen trade in a very particular strain of British indie rock that feels simultaneously nostalgic and urgent, and this track leans hard into that alchemy. The guitar riff has a looping, hypnotic quality, cycling over a rhythm section that pushes forward with quiet insistence rather than brute force. Van McCann's voice has a nasal, slightly strained quality that shouldn't work as well as it does — it sounds like someone singing through the specific discomfort of a feeling they can't quite shake. The lyric orbits the idea of wanting to disappear into someone, to find in another person a shelter from the noise of everything else, and there's a teenage intensity to it that feels authentic rather than overwrought. The song builds in the way that good indie rock should, adding weight and density without losing the intimacy of the opening. You'd listen to this in a car late at night, passenger seat, city lights blurring past, half in conversation and half somewhere entirely internal.