Casper Skulls have successfully grown into their own on their newest album Kit-Cat (Next Door Records, April 11, 2025), taking a refreshingly patient and collaborative approach to songwriting that ultimately left the Sudbury/Toronto, Ontario band creating the best album of their career. On Kit-Cat, Casper Skulls become a fully involved effort shared between band members and longtime friends Melanie St-Pierre-Bednis (guitar/bass/vocals), Neil Bednis (guitar/bass/vocals), and Fraser McClean (drums/bass).

Bednis and St-Pierre-Bednis, the husband-and-wife duo at the forefront of the indie rock project, split the songwriting on Kit-Cat, which was recorded over six days at Deadpan Studios in February 2024. While the two guitarists share the mic across the 11-track album, they also share instruments with McClean, who carries more than his own weight on drums, bass, and guitar throughout, as well as Lonely Parade guitarist Augusta Veno who makes a guest appearance on the sixth track “Numbing Mind,” and engineer Matt Weiwel, who contributes guitar, pedal steel, and synthesizer across the songs on Kit-Cat.

The combined effort that fueled Kit-Cat paints a poignant picture of what Casper Skulls has evolved into since their last record was released in 2021. “We decided to make this album super fun with no expectations,” St-Pierre-Bednis says. “That approach made the songs turn out even better.” The result is an 11-track mosaic of the band’s life in recent years, grieving loved ones and lost relationships, full of self-love and love shared between longtime bandmates who not only explore new lyrical inspirations but shuffle their lineup from track-to-track to showcase their ultimate strength: collaboration.

The band took influence from all corners of their life within the lyrics on Kit-Cat. “Kihl” investigates recurring nightmares St-Pierre-Bednis once experienced before deciding to move North to Sudbury from the band’s former hometown Toronto, while on “Petty at a Funeral,” she dissects messy family dynamics playing out at a funeral. Meanwhile, Bednis takes inspiration from film and literature (There Will Be Blood influences the Texas love letter “Spindletop,” while “The Awakening” recalls the story of discontent and social solitude told in Kate Chopin’s novel of the same name). And together, Bednis and St-Pierre-Bednis both lend their voices throughout the entirety of “Roddy Piper,” the lead single off of Kit-Cat, which simultaneously gives a nod to their recent obsession with pro wrestling and uses its imagery as metaphor for confrontations that come up within a relationship.

“I find our band is strongest when Mel and I sing together,” Bednis says about “Roddy Piper,” the fiercely inviting second track on Kit-Cat, and the first song in Casper Skulls’ extensive catalog in which he and St-Pierre-Bednis both sing with each other across the entire track.

But while Bednis’ voice is the most present across Kit-Cat (he sings on 8 of the record’s 11 tracks), his, St-Pierre-Bednis’, and McClean’s fingerprints can be found on every song throughout the album. In addition to playing drums on the entire record, McClean adds bass on six of the 11 songs and makes his debut on guitar on the album’s opening two songs, “Spindletop” and “Roddy Piper.” Elsewhere, the longtime Casper Skulls bassist-turned-drummer adds evocative color to support the songs using violin, baritone, keyboards and a number of synthesizers, helping bring his bandmates’ songwriting to life. “He really elevates each track,” Bednis says about McClean, who stepped in on drums for Casper Skulls.

Casper Skulls also found a perfect partner in engineer Matt Weiwel, who extended his talents beyond the mixing board and added synthesizers on tracks like “Petty at a Funeral” and “Sweet Spots.” Weiwel, a fellow Sudbury native, has long been in the band’s orbit and on their shortlist of engineers they one day hoped to work with. So when Bednis and St-Pierre-Bednis moved back to their hometown, the timing only made sense to reach out to Weiwel about recording Kit-Cat. “He’s a really relaxed person and brings a lot of cool ideas that we might not have initially thought of,” says St-Pierre-Bednis. “On ‘Dying in Eight Verses,’ Fraser tracked violin and Matt ran it through tape machines. Then he started to mess around with it, play it backwards, and do all this weird stuff. That was Matt’s idea, and it added something really cool to the song.” The comfort the band found in working with Weiwel, and in working at the cozy Deadpan Studios, helped Bednis, St-Pierre-Bednis, and McClean tie the bow on their third full-length album as Casper Skulls.

On the front cover art, the band pays homage to the lyrical themes on Kit-Cat with a collage of references to lines heard across the 11 new songs. Painted by St. Pierre-Bednis in the spring of 2024, the art is centered on a namesake “Kitty Cat” clock, whose black eyes overlook a portrait of a dirt road – a tip-of-the-cap to the rural Western themes Bednis sings about on the album’s opening track. Below that, a portrait of a ballet dancer in a luchador mask hides behind flowing vines. And sitting next to it, of course, is a pot of coffee fueling it all.

Following a lineup change, a change of scenery, and several major life changes (Bednis and St-Pierre-Bednis welcomed their first child in 2023, while McClean began hitting the road as a guitar tech for fellow Canadian bands like Tokyo Police Club and Pup), the one thing that remains steadfast in Casper Skulls’ identity as a band is its synchronicity. And on Kit-Cat, it might be the best it's ever been as the Sudbury/Toronto indie rock group embraces each other’s skills and celebrates all that each member brings to the table.

Casper Skulls have an impressive touring history, sharing stages with renowned acts such as PUP, Thurston Moore, Spirit of the Beehive and Kathleen Hannah. Their live shows are a force to be reckoned with, captivating audiences and turning heads with their commanding stage presence.

River & Sky Music Festival 2025