Dead Tooth Unleashes New Single ‘You Never Do Shit’

Dead Tooth’s latest single “You Never Do Shit” channels a familiar strain of Brooklyn disaffection—sweaty, sardonic, and steeped in the sour aftertaste of early-aughts post-punk revivalism. It’s a song that shouldn’t work as well as it does: chaotic, slightly unhinged, and written for a fictional band on Apple TV’s City on Fire, but instead it becomes one of the band’s most vital cuts to date. That it survived its fictional roots to find a home on Dead Tooth’s debut says something about its staying power.

The track’s real charm lies in how unafraid it is to be messy. Saxophone bursts screech against punk guitar tones while Ellis snarls like someone halfway between Richard Hell and Craig Finn, dishing out grievances with a sneer that feels both theatrical and genuinely aggrieved. It’s a sound more committed to vibe than polish, but that works in its favor—it knows what world it wants to live in.

Much of what makes Dead Tooth interesting lies outside the song itself. The band’s collaborations, unpredictable lineups, and chaotic tour history give weight to even their most flippant lines. There’s a meta-narrative at work here too: a band born from a Brooklyn diner dream, now using a song discarded by television to cut their teeth on the real stage.

For a band with one foot in noise and the other in narrative art-punk, “You Never Do Shit” is an essential step. It’s not clean, it’s not pretty—but it is alive. And in a time when many guitar bands feel like relics of better ideas, Dead Tooth still sound like they’ve got something left to say—loudly, and without asking for permission.