Niis - Earthquakes
Lead Single • Play Niis (2026). Los Angeles, California, USA.
NIIS Turn Heartbreak into a More Vulnerable Kind of Punk
Formed in Los Angeles in 2020, NIIS have built their identity around the collision of ’80s hardcore punk, garage rock, grunge and the confrontational energy of the city's underground. Led by vocalist Mimi Doe and guitarist Ryan McGuffin, with bassist Izzy and drummer Jonathan Salvo, the band followed 2025 debut album NIIS WORLD with a new deal at Rise Records and a deliberate expansion of their sound. “Earthquakes” is the lead single from forthcoming six-track EP Play Niis, out October 23, where visceral punk energy increasingly makes room for melody, vulnerability and emotional openness.
Earthquakes: Turning Heartbreak into Something You Can Survive
“Earthquakes” comes directly from a period of emotional upheaval. Doe describes the song as being about growing through pain and heartbreak, accepting lost love and recognising the scars it can leave behind—ultimately treating the track almost as a love letter to heartbreak itself. That perspective changes the emotional direction of NIIS without removing the urgency that has always powered the band.
Produced by Austin Coupe and Michael Shuman, the song pushes beyond the pure confrontation of the band's earlier work. Punk aggression remains at its foundation, but stronger melodic instincts give the track a more expansive emotional arc. Instead of using volume purely as an expression of anger, NIIS use it to process loss, turning the destabilising aftermath of a relationship into forward movement.
Why It Matters: Punk Is Making Space for Vulnerability Again
A noticeable strand of contemporary punk is expanding beyond anger as its primary emotional language. Heartbreak, uncertainty, tenderness and recovery can coexist with distorted guitars and physical intensity, allowing bands to remain aggressive without restricting what that aggression can communicate.
“Earthquakes” captures that evolution particularly clearly. NIIS aren't abandoning the volatility that defined their rise through the Los Angeles underground; they are widening what it can contain. Play Niis was written through heartbreak and upheaval, while its musical world deliberately evokes the flip-phone, Hot Topic and Buffy the Vampire Slayer culture of the early 2000s. The result connects punk's confrontational energy with something more emotionally exposed: sometimes surviving the earthquake becomes more important than pretending it never shook you.
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