THE MOTELS

Icons Creating Evil Art is proud to announce the signing of The Motels, one of American New Wave’s defining bands. Led by the unmistakable voice and songwriting of Martha Davis, the band will release Strange Days on November 13, 2026, offering the first taste of their forthcoming ninth studio album.

Listen on all major streaming platforms here (Nov. 13th)

The single arrives one day before The Motels perform at Darker Waves Festival in Huntington Beach, California, on a bill featuring Morrissey, The Smashing Pumpkins, Simple Minds, The Psychedelic Furs, Soft Cell and Gary Numan.

Emerging from California’s fertile underground, The Motels helped bring New Wave’s atmosphere, dramatic tension and outsider sensibility into the American pop mainstream. Their music paired sharp hooks with nocturnal unease, with Davis’s expressive voice giving songs of loneliness, desire and uncertainty an identity all their own. Their breakthrough brought enduring classics: Only the Lonely reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982, followed by Suddenly Last Summer, which matched that peak in 1983. Further Top 40 singles included Remember the Nights and Shame, while their five-album Capitol Records run produced two gold albums. These achievements established The Motels as both a commercial force and a distinctive presence within New Wave.

Now, Strange Days turns that same sense of unease toward a world shaped by anxiety, self-interest and the selling of fear. Written by Martha Davis, Nic Johns and Eric Gardner, the song confronts the psychological cost of living in a state of permanent alarm. Its lyrics move from personal vulnerability toward a wider vision of a civilisation losing its bearings. Davis traces the song’s beginnings to around 2006, reflecting on the atmosphere of fear that followed the millennium and September 11, and how that fear became a tool for commerce and control. “Fear became a marketing tool,” says Davis. Those observations grew into a broader creative direction for the forthcoming album, which she describes as
– “a concept album, dealing with the death of a once rational civilization, that let fear and commerce tell them what to do.”

Already road-tested in the band’s live set, Strange Days now receives its studio release. Produced by Clint Walsh and Nic Johns, mixed by Norm Block and mastered by John Webber at AIR Studios, the single brings together a band whose musical partnership stretches back more than two decades: Davis, Walsh, Johns and Gardner, alongside longtime Motels saxophonist and keyboardist Marty Jourard.

Meanwhile, The Motels’ catalogue continues to find fresh cultural contexts. Total Control appeared in season two of The Bear in 2023 and returned to television in 2026 through FX’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette. Its placement in Love Story even drew attention in Vogue, which noted how the song underscored the central couple’s shifting power dynamic.

With Strange Days, The Motels bring their history into a new partnership with Icons Creating Evil Art, opening the next chapter with music that speaks directly to the present.

LIVE
November 14, 2026 — Darker Waves Festival, Huntington Beach, California

credits:
Martha Davis – Vocals
Eric Gardner – Drums
Nicholas Johns – Bass, Keyboards
Martin Jourard – Saxophone, Piano
Clint Walsh – Guitars, Keyboards

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New Wave Icons THE MOTELS Sign to Icons Creating Evil Art, New Single ‘Strange Days’ Out November 13th

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