Sleigh Bells Chronicle Best of Times & Worst of Times on Joyful, Thundering ‘Bunky Becky Birthday Boy’ Album

On the title track to their 2013 album, Bitter Rivals, Sleigh Bells singer Alexis Krauss howled the phrase, “It was the best of times/ It was the worst of times” over the sounds of barking from her beloved dog Riz and guitarist/producer Derek Miller’s signature crushing beats and buzzsaw guitars.

A decade-plus later, Krauss and Miller are back in their Dickensian bag on the group’s just-released sixth full-length studio album, Bunky Becky Birthday Boy, on which they both celebrate the birth of Krauss’ now 17-month old firstborn child, as well as the painful loss of Riz via the duo’s latest day-glo furnace blast of joyous, raucous metal pop.

“Life is on my shoulder and death is on my other shoulder and they exist all the time at the same time… and you don’t realize how close it is until you deal with that sudden loss of a being you care so much about,” says Krauss in a pre-album release Zoom call with Billboard, during which she tries to save her hoarse voice while battling a nasty virus.

She recalls getting the call about Riz’s death a day after a custody hand-off with her ex at a gas station while running through then-three month old son Wilder’s nearly hour-long bedtime routine. “You’re with this being that was just born out of your body who’s just so alive and gasping and crying trying to navigate this new life on earth and I get the call about her and I just broke the f–k down,” Krauss says. “This actual, tangible loss, so I have those two incredibly powerful forces co-existing at the same time.”

That life/death push and pull is the crux of the album, which opens with the electro new wave avalanche of sound “Bunky Pop,” an homage to Riz — who died in December 2023 — that borrows her nickname for its title. “The best girl in the world/ Hey birthday girl/ The best girl in the world/ Nothing’s fun it’s hard as f–k/ Here without you,” Krauss sings over chest-crushing guitar riffs, ping-ponging circus keyboards and the band’s signature mix of pop sweetness with hammering beats.

“The ultimate goal would be to try to make a record with his as little self-consciousness as possible in such a f–ked up present,” says Miller, describing what is, kind of, a theme album that tells both the duo’s origin story on the single “Wanna Start a Band?,” while also introducing Bunky’s playmate, the 1980s Europop-influenced Roxette Ric. “Like when you’re home with your best friends are loved ones in your sweatpants are the couch eating ice cream, like, ‘let’s go to the best place on the planet to be inspired to make a record that isn’t afraid to be seen,” Miller says.

The guitarist/producer describes Becky as a “Punky Brewster type… like if Riz was a human being [she’d be] a lovable teenage hell-raiser with a bit of a snarl,” while Roxette — inspired by the beloved ’80s/90s Swedish pop group — is a “understated, little less flashy, more confident and more measured.” Roxette’s theme song is another onslaught of Miller’s bouncy new wave keyboards and crisp drum machine beats, combined with stun gun guitar and Krauss’ keening refrain, “Roxette it’s all you/ Your pop metal dream came true/ Roxette they doubt you/ They don’t know how it goes.”

Describing the two fictional pals, Krauss says she pictures them as a mix of Cyndi Lauper and Janet Jackson circa Rhythm Nation just hanging out in their bedroom. The playful video for “Bunky Pop” is another winky homage to one of the pair’s touchstones: Lauper’s beloved 1983 “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” video. It features actress Dylan Gelula (Smile 2) sashaying down city streets, popping little girls’ balloons and slapping a suitor in the face with his gift bouquet of flowers as the band sing and strum their way down the avenue.

As for the theme running through the LP, Miller says songs like video game glitch rocker “Wanna Start a Band?” re-tell the duo’s famous origin story in which the guitarist/producer took a runner and moved to New York in the early 2000s in search of the perfect female lead singer for his next act, facing repeated rejection until Strauss picked up what he was putting down. “It kind of mirrors what happened with the band — Becky suffers a loss in the first song and her reaction is to start a band to put all her energy and grief, which is track two, which is essentially what happened with us,” he says of the song which opens with an 8-bit snippet mimicking the power up sound from an old Sega Genesis gaming system.

The good friends and bandmates — they live 30 minutes away from each other and text one another several times a week — are happy to call out all the way they celebrate the music they love on the album, with Miller gleefully revealing that the G-C-D-C attack of the glitch pop “This Summer” as “a full-on Ramones moment.”

He also name drops Roxette, of course, as well as his own musical North Star, The Cars, nerding out about the fact that a handful of the new songs start with an “eighth note downstroked guitar.. which is full-on [Cars singer] Ric Ocasek reference.” Roxette’s last name is yet another shout out to the late new wave idol and producer Ocasek with Miller joking, “We’re not burying the Easter eggs, there right there on the surface.”

That also includes the pinging Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam-esque keyboards on “Blasted Shadow” and the “deliberate” Beastie Boys “Fight For Your Right” reference on the hair metal party starter “Badly.” From the obvious inclusion of the word “fight” on the refrain (“the party is hotter than we could ever imagine”) to the tongue-in-cheek attitude on the track that begins with Krauss saying “you gotta be kidding me” and laughing, the pair felt like being able to laugh at themselves was proof they were onto something good.

“We just looked at each other like, ‘can we do this?’” Krauss remembers asking Miller after they mixed the bombastic “Badly.” “It was living and breathing that moment like, ‘we’ve tapped into something exciting here’ and also worrying because it’s pushing [us] out of our comfort zone,” she says, noting that she recorded the album while eight months pregnant.

More than happy to embrace the pop metal moniker (it’s even on their merch this time around), Miller says he brought in two of his former collaborators in Florida metalcore band Poison the Well — producer Steve Evetts and drummer Chris Hornbrook — into the fold this time around to beef up the sound. After mixing an early version of the album with just programmed beats, Miller thought they were done, then sheepishly called Krauss from the airport to tell her the good news: “the record’s gonna be great, [but the] bad news is it’s not yet.”

Known for their high-energy live show, Miller says though he backslid a bit during the recording of the album, he’s training hard for the duo’s upcoming North American tour that kicks off on May 7 in Phoenix. Sport climber Krauss adds that her cardio and stamina are better than ever and she can’t wait to be back on stage. “The music kind of demands that unhinged performance,” she says. “I’ve only become more athletic… and after giving birth I feel that way even more, like, ‘let’s f–king go!’”

Check out the Bunky Pop video and listen to Bunky Becky Birthday Boy album below.