Something New

Alright Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew has something spinning that might just catch your ear if you like your rock served up lean and mean. We are talking about “Something New” by The Schwa, from the single of the same name that dropped back in March of 2020. This one comes out of Greenville, South Carolina, where a rock duo has been cooking up loud guitars and pounding drums in a converted carport studio. The track runs at a brisk 160 beats per minute, the kind of drive that keeps your hands busy on the steering wheel and your head nodding along. Songwriting credits go to Cooper Phillips on drums, Eric Intile on guitar and vocals, and Taylor Wood pitching in on the composition side. It is the sound of two guys who learned early how to lock a hook together without a lot of fuss, the sort of raw minimalism that lets the riff and the beat do most of the talking.

What makes the song stick is the same spirit that runs through everything the pair has put out. They have never been ones for big production or stacked tracks. Instead they keep it to the essentials, the way a good garage or basement band does when the neighbors are already knocking on the wall. The Schwa write and record everything themselves in that carport, sharing the space with a family of stray cats and whoever lives next door that day. You can almost hear the walls shaking on a cut like this one. It is the kind of record that feels like it was captured the first time the groove locked in, before anybody had time to second-guess the arrangement. Over at THE ZOO we dig that approach, the same freeform attitude that keeps the deep cuts and the new noise side by side.

The guys behind the name have been at it longer than the single might suggest. Eric Intile and Cooper Phillips met back in eighth grade down in South Carolina and started writing demos after school at their parents’ houses. That is where they figured out song structure and how to land a decent hook, the kind of early practice that sticks with you. They carried the habit into college, earning music-business degrees while still jamming in whatever configuration felt right that week. Their first show together happened in somebody’s living room in the old college town. They were nervous walking in, the way most young bands are when the room is small and every mistake is obvious, but once the set finished they felt like they had the whole place in their pocket. That living-room moment is the kind of story every rock band carries, the one that reminds you the noise has to start somewhere small before it finds a bigger stage.

Influences show up in the way they talk about records. Franz Ferdinand’s self-titled album, Oasis and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, and The Black Keys’ El Camino sit high on the list. Those are the albums they point to when someone asks what a rock record ought to sound like—no skips, just songs that hit and keep hitting. You can hear the echo of that taste in the tight, driving feel of “Something New.” It is not a cover or a direct lift, but the same idea of keeping the parts lean so the energy stays up front. The pair have said that as they have gotten older they have stopped chasing the loftier goals they used to set for themselves. Now it is simply about the music, having some fun, and making a little noise. That attitude fits the carport sessions and the short, punchy singles they keep releasing.

Later work shows the same core. Recent cuts keep the loud-guitar, pounding-drum approach while the online and local following has grown. They still operate out of that converted carport, the stray cats still hanging around, the neighbors still dealing with the volume. One of the newer tracks came from a riff they stumbled on during the very first jam, back when they were still figuring out what the band should even sound like. That kind of origin story is familiar to anyone who has ever started a project with a couple of friends and a pile of gear. The Schwa treat the whole thing as an ongoing conversation between the two of them, the songs arriving when the hook shows up and the arrangement stays simple enough to play live without a lot of extra hands.

You can follow the trail on their socials if you want more of the updates and the live clips. They keep a page on Facebook and post regularly on Instagram, where the short clips and the new single announcements land. The music itself lives over on their Bandcamp, the place they point people when it is time to hear the full tracks and support the recordings directly. No big fan sites or dedicated groups have sprung up yet, which makes sense for a duo still building the catalog one single at a time. The local scene in Greenville has given them room to play, and the online side has been growing as the newer songs circulate.

That brings us back to the track on the deck. “Something New” sits early in the timeline, a snapshot of the duo before the later singles and the steady stream of 2026 releases. It carries the same DNA: guitar up front, drums driving, vocals cutting through without a lot of polish. The 160 BPM keeps it moving, the kind of tempo that works whether you are hearing it on the radio or playing it loud in the garage. For a pair who started writing after school and learned the craft by doing it, the song is another piece of the ongoing experiment. They are not trying to rewrite the rulebook. They just want the riff to hit, the drums to land, and the whole thing to feel like it came from a room where two people were having a good time making noise. That is the story the Zoo Crew likes to tell when a record like this one comes across the desk—the long path from the first demos to the track that is playing right now for the Zoo Freaks tuned in.

Keep listening, Zoo Freaks. There is always another deep cut or a fresh riff waiting on the other side of the next break. The Schwa have more noise planned, and the carport is still standing. We will keep spinning the records that earn their place on the air, the ones that sound like they were made by people who still remember why they picked up the instruments in the first place.