Sunflower Bean: 2025

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

From the opening notes of the riffy stomper “Champagne Taste” that began this session, Sunflower Bean made it clear why they’ve been FUV faves for a decade.

In 2016, the then 20-year-olds hit us with their formidable debut album, Human Ceremony, establishing them as an essential New York band. The band's fans couldn’t have hoped for a better ride in the subsequent years. Sunflower Bean have been honing their craft, building on impeccable influences and, as we touched upon in my conversation with the trio, simply growing up.

In recent years, Sunflower Bean's Julia Cumming, Nick Kivlen and Olive Faber have assumed control of engineering and producing recordings; trusting their instincts more has only made a good thing better.

The new album, Mortal Primetime, was the occasion for this visit, and its clarity of vision was in full bloom in Studio A. Faber bashed away behind the drum kit, setting the tone. Their propulsive beats and clean fills are the Bean’s engine.

Cumming is as compelling a rock singer as they come, and her bass playing is tough and nuanced. Kivlen, California living no doubt agreeing with him, is tossing off mean guitar riffs like he’s got a stockpile of them. (Both Kivlen and Cumming have West Coast addresses these days, while Faber keeps a flag planted in Brooklyn.)

In this "FUV Live" session, hear new tunes ("Nothing Romantic" and "Look What You've Done to Me") plus insights from the band about the charms of playing in a room together and avoiding overdubs. They also spoke about giving each other space — and why that's kept them together — and how the title of the new album came from a misheard Iggy Pop lyric.

[Recorded: 5/19/25; Engineered by Jim O'Hara with Erin Merriman and Holden Buckley. Produced by Meghan Suma. Videographers: Adithi Vimalanathan, Therese Burgo, Nikki Phillips, and Olivia Iannaccone.]