Jawdropped’s "Monday" Captures the Tension Before a Confession

Jawdropped arrived last year with an easy-to-like debut EP, Just Fantasy, and the LA quartet’s steady climb now reads like a small, sensible escalation rather than an overnight story. They formed in 2024, cut their teeth on local bills, and this spring signed to Transgressive/Canvasback — a move that matters because it lets the band keep their scrappy power-pop instincts while getting a few more lanes open for visibility.

“Monday,” their new single, is compact and restless. It opens with the line “I can’t wait for Monday ’cause that’s gonna be the day/ That I say the one thing, the one thing I gotta say,” and in that couplet you get the whole thrust: not just anticipation, but the pressure that builds between small talk and emergency. The track rides a bouncy guitar figure and a punching backbeat; there’s verve here, yes, but it’s delivered with a nervous energy, like someone rehearsing a confession in the bathroom while their phone buzzes on the counter.

“Monday is about treading the waters of anticipation, but deciding to face your feelings head on. The truth will set you free, even if it’s just the Sunday scaries.”

That bit of press copy reads truer once you listen. Producer choices sharpen the contrast between pop clarity and jitter: the vocal sits slightly forward, breathy on the held notes, while the rhythm guitar keeps anxious eighths moving underneath. There’s a faint sheen — not overpolished — that suggests the band is learning how to translate their live push into studio craft without losing the tightness that made the EP feel immediate.

The Rob Fraebel-directed video mirrors the song’s pre-confession focus. It doesn’t try to be cinematic so much as intimate: close-ups of hands fidgeting, split-second cuts to a protagonist rehearsing lines in the mirror, quick transitions between night and morning light. The clip privileges moments over narrative, which suits a song about that exact sliver of time before you say the thing. It’s a short film of small anxieties, not a sugar-coated romcom setup.

For Jawdropped, this single and the new label partnership map onto a pretty specific career moment. Signing to Transgressive/Canvasback puts them alongside artists who have used similar platforms to stretch beyond bedroom-scale buzz, and “Monday” demonstrates they’re thinking about momentum. It’s the sort of song that won’t change the world, but it signals a band getting sharper on how to write a moment that hooks radios, playlists, and the kind of live crowd that remembers the chorus after two listens.

There are risks. Power pop is a crowded shorthand: jangly guitars, punchy drums, earnest hooks. Jawdropped’s advantage is the way they thread anxiety into that template; the trepidation in the lyric stops the tune from flattening into pure nostalgia. If they lean too hard into polish on the next record, that nervousness could be lost. If they keep balancing immediacy with slightly larger production, they’ll be set up to translate festival spots into headlining rooms.

The band has a UK run coming up and a stateside date this summer, which feels strategic — test the song in front of a diverse crowd, then measure how it lands back home. Tour dates:

5/14-15 – Brighton, UK @ The Great Escape Festival
5/16 – Sheffield, UK @ Get Together Festival
5/18 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
5/19 – London, UK @ George Tavern
5/22 – Cardiff, UK @ Clwb Ifor Bach
5/23 – Bristol, UK @ Dot To Dot Festival
5/24 – Nottingham, UK @ Dot To Dot Festival
7/09 – Denver, CO @ Denver Botanic Gardens

“Monday” won’t rewrite Jawdropped’s narrative on its own, but it’s an articulate next step: sharper hooks, clearer production choices, and a songwriting focus that turns a small, relatable fear into something listenable and repeatable. For a band at the start of a potentially broader moment, that’s precisely what you want to hear.