Nashville-based Experimental Pop outfit Total Wife was inspired for their new album, come back down, by ideas that composer/Producer Luna Kupper pieced together between waking and dreaming during late-night mixing sessions.

However, in the weeks before its release, Kupper’s hard drive was accidentally reformatted, wiping the finished album, along with half of the record the duo is currently working on, and dozens of other sessions she’d been recording for other bands. A data recovery service returned 25,000 unnamed WAV files, most of them, in Kupper’s words, “a rotted screaming mass of different sounds and tracks digi-melted together as if the hard drive did a harsh noise remix of itself.”

Buried in the wreckage was an older drive holding half-finished versions of some come back down songs, four of which turned out to be recoverable.

Rather than let the files go to waste, Total Wife handed them to some of their favorite artists to see what could be built from the ruins. The result is come.back.down.x.recovery, featuring reimaginings from Winter, Full Body 2, They Are Gutting a Body of Water, and Scott Cortez (Lovesliescrushing, Astrobrite). The album arrives on October 9, 2026.

Lyricist/vocalist Ash Richter comments:

These salvaged files were then treated so lovingly by generational voices. I feel grateful that they were able to work with what we had and make something cool out of it. 

Richter and Kupper, friends from high school, formed Total Wife in 2016, relocating from Boston to Nashville in 2020. Both are visual artists as well as musicians, which they incorporate into their work with Total Wife “via layered and purposeful visuals.”

They make their own videos and release tapes through their label Ivy Eat Home, as well as hosting house shows in the basement they’ve christened Ryman 2. They’ve also assembled a live band for the first time, “injecting their creative process with a jolt of spontaneity and aliveness.”