Jungle Green Embrace Their Weirdo Rock Impulses on “Stop Giving Your Heart”

Andrew Smith—the multi-talented frontman of Chicago weirdo rock outfit Jungle Green—started writing the band’s new single, “Stop Giving Your Heart,” in 2014, but only got around to finishing it over the last few months.

“‘Stop Giving Your Heart’ is one of the more complex songs we’ve ever recorded, not only because of its hefty amount of tracks but also because we wrote, recorded, and mixed our parts from separate homes,” Smith tells American Songwriter over email. “We’ve been recording tracks remotely from our homes, uploading individual tracks into a shared Google Drive, and mixing together via Zoom.” 

The final product—premiering below—is a delightfully off-kilter indie-pop number that pairs Smith’s warbled vocals with skating synths, twinkling keys, and a groovy bassline. For Jungle Green, it’s something of a trippy, dreamlike anthem: “I wrote this song as an attempt to make something anthemic,” says Smith. “I’m not expecting this, but it’d be great if ‘Stop Giving Your Heart’ was someday in a league with ‘Eye of the Tiger’ or ‘Don’t Know What You Got (‘Til It’s Gone).’”

“Stop Giving Your Heart” comes after the band’s latest singles “I Can’t Close My Eyes (When I’m In Your Light)” and “Josie’s In The Back Of A Pickup Truck.” It also comes alongside another single, “Ritchie.”

“I wrote this song about a documentary I watched on the serial killer, Richard Ramirez,” says Smith of “Ritchie.” “It’s about how Ramirez was basically destined to become a serial killer from an early age, through exposure to extreme violence. ‘Bad people’ tend to come from a line of other bad people (and bad environments), and it becomes a vicious cycle.”

Jungle Green is currently rounded out by Emma Collins, Adam Miller, Viv McCall, Alex Heaney, and Adam Obermeier, but it was initially Smith’s solo project.

“When I moved to Chicago, I wanted to have a group and be able to play live shows that wasn’t just me singing karaoke style over a track,” Smith told the Chicago Tribune in December 2019, just a few months after Jungle Green released their debut album, Runaway With Jungle Green. “I got really lucky meeting these beautiful people. It was a thing where a new member would be added every show until it was the six of us and it felt right.”

If Runaway reflects Jungle Green’s six-person-strong collaborative approach, it also reflects the influence of producer Jonathon Rado. Though Rado is best known as one half of Foxygen, he’s also had a hand in crafting some of the most influential indie rock records of the last decade, such as Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising, Beach Fossils’ Somersault, and Whitney’s Light Upon the Lake. Of those albums, Light Upon the Lake feels most closely aligned with Runaway, but “Stop Giving Your Heart” shows Jungle Green moving in a stranger and more dynamic direction. Check it out below.