Indie Bedroom Artist HARMLESS Announces New Album By ‘Them, By You, By Me;’ Shares First Single + Official Video

Dreamy indie rock artist Harmless announces his sophomore studio album, By Them, By You, By Me, will be released on October 17, 2025. The record finds Los Angeles-based, Mexico-born artist Nacho Cano ruminating on the intersection between creativity and careerism—the inexorable struggle that myriad artists face while uncovering their true selves within their work—and sees Cano emerge reborn with a new sense of purpose and sonic vitality. The resulting album, in Cano’s words, is “a record about rejection. It’s a breakup album, but about breaking up with your job. There’s this idea that labor is what validates you. My dream came true—so why am I not happy? Those are feelings that are very complementary to heartbreak. So I wanted to write about my passion and falling out with it.”

A largely self-produced affair, By Them By You By Me was assembled to completion in Mexico City alongside studio wizards Santiago Mijares (Leon Bridges, Sam Evian), Patricio Mijares (Panda Bear, Sam Evian) and Francisco Sánchez de la Vega (Hawaiian Gremlins, O Tortuga), accompanying him: “I gave myself and friends 10 days to do it, and at the end we were like, ‘Alright, I think this is it!”

Tomorrow, he will share the first single, “future music,” a fuzzy, bedroom pop track named after a record store in LA’s Highland Park neighborhood. Cano adds, “I was in the middle of wrapping up the record when this song came to me. I felt that I was stuck because I felt I had no more upward mobility. The eternal growth train had stopped, and so did everything else. At that point, I emotionally felt like the song’s opener. Fucked. Desperate to get unstuck. Flogging myself even though I am creatively in a very fortunate position. I’d express these feelings to my loved ones to an extent that was unreasonable – I wanted to be cut loose. I also felt like a contradiction. I wanted things to get better. Asking what I could do? Why would you keep me around, if I keep letting you down? The answer lies in the love I feel. As much as it pains me, I love doing this.”

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Cano explains the video as “the literal interpretation of what happens if you keep chasing the carrot.” The video also introduces Harmless as a dejected “salary man,” tying thematically into the narrative behind the track. To film it, he flew to Mexico City to work with award-winning director Alejandra Villalba García, who wrote the screenplay along with Francisco Sánchez de la Vega, with whom he worked on the record. A full list of production credits can be found on YouTube.

By Them By You By Me is the latest release in an estimable body of work that Cano has built for himself under the Harmless name, dating back to the project’s 2012 debut, I’m Sure, under the initial alias Twin Cabins. It was from that first mixtape that Cano achieved a viral hit in the form of “Swing Lynn,” which dominated TikTok and ended up tallying more than 328 million plays on Spotify alone, and is certified Gold in the U.S.  His 2024 debut record, Springs Eternal, continued that momentum with praise from Flood Magazine, Paste, The Big Takeover, Stereogum, and more, totaling his streams to over 800 million. He has toured with Vacations, Wavves, and Roar.