Fish Hunt Announces New Album Life, Shares Title Track

New York’s Fish Hunt, the project of Lucy Mondello, has shared “Life,” the title track from her upcoming third album, alongside an official music video. The song poses a plain question about what life actually amounts to, and the video, carried through the city by Mondello and bandmate Avery Kaplan, answers it without saying a word.

A fixture of New York’s DIY scene, Fish Hunt has shared bills with artists including Horse Jumper of Love, Joyer, Superfan, Youbet, and Melaina Kol, and the project plays a run of shows around the city this fall. Mondello found her own voice listening to artists like Imogen Heap, Johanna Warren, and Animal Collective, a mix that’s shaped a sound built from live instrumentation and close attention to detail rather than any single genre.

Life arrives October 23 via VHS Records. Recorded at VHS Studios in Brooklyn, the album pulls in a wider circle of collaborators than anything Mondello has released before, and pushes past the guitar-driven approach of her earlier work without losing the intimacy that defines her songwriting. It’s her third full-length, following a run of releases that have steadily widened who she works with without changing what the songs are actually about.

Of the title track, Mondello says she wrote it after an extended listen to Lots of Hands, working sampled loops into a process she usually reserves for live instruments. She points to Melaina Kol, Gold Panda, and People I Love as reference points for blending organic playing with samples, calling the approach new territory for her. The lyrics came together during a stretch when her intuition, ordinarily a reliable guide, “diminishes, leaving me utterly confused about the purpose of life.”

The video’s visual answer runs opposite the song’s question. Filmed with a portable living room setup carried through New York City and its surrounding suburbs, it follows Mondello and Kaplan through steadily shifting settings, from forest to street, while the two stay anchored to each other and their shared activity. Friendship, adventure, and play run through Fish Hunt’s music, and the video treats them as the closest thing to an answer the song offers.

Mondello has described her guiding intuition as a kind of north star, the thing that keeps pulling her back toward the record even when its purpose isn’t clear in the moment. Life sits with that uncertainty rather than resolving it, treating the search itself as worth documenting.

Life extends that search for connection across a full record, built this time with a wider group of players around Mondello than on any release before it. Where the earlier work stayed close and self-contained, the new album finds her opening the process up without losing the thread that runs through everything she’s made.