Pain Gain – Pain Gain
Pain Gain, the collaborative project of Chloe Kaul (Kllo), Hamish Lefevre (SWIM), and Samuel Cooke (CRUSH3d), today announce their self-titled debut album Pain Gain, due for release July 10 via Play It Again Sam.
Alongside the announcement, the trio unveil new single “The Fame”, offering a striking new window into the world they’ve built together.
Formed in 2023, Pain Gain began as a deliberate left turn. Shedding their established electronic identities, Kaul, Lefevre and Cooke retreated to the beachside forests of southern Australia, armed with guitars, modular synths and a tape recorder. What began as a temporary escape soon evolved into something far more profound: a complete recalibration of sound, process and purpose. The result is Pain Gain, a debut album that trades velocity for gravity, moving fluidly between indie rock melodrama and expansive pop balladry while rejecting genre as a fixed idea.
New single “The Fame” sits at the core of the record’s emotional landscape. Playing with the familiar architecture of a pop hit, the track subverts expectation to expose the hollow reality beneath success. Written by Kaul during a rare pause from years of touring, its lyrics interrogate what ‘making it’ really means, before being brought to life collaboratively during the band’s remote recording sessions.
“’The Fame’ is a raw l ok at the seductive pull and hidden cost of fame, viewed from the outside. The track confronts the illusion of it all, the personal sacrifices it demands and the emotional weight it places on those chasing it. At its core, it’s not just about the obsession with success, but what it takes from you. It’s a reflection on identity, mental strain, and the quiet fear of losing yourself in the very thing you once wanted most.”
Across Pain Gain, that tension becomes a guiding force. The album’s ten tracks trace personal upheaval with unflinching honesty, led by Kaul’s at-times-excoriating lyricism, while Lefevre and Cooke shape immersive, tactile soundscapes where no single voice dominates. Working instinctively, the trio embraced single takes, analogue experimentation and the beauty of imperfection, allowing songs to emerge organically from their surroundings. Each room of their retreat became a makeshift studio; melodies drifted through kitchen conversations, while lyrics were forged in late-night exchanges by the fire.
“We went away to gether with only the intention of starting something new, we never expected that we would end up not only with an album, but one that feels as cohesive and collectively personal as this. It’s a record that looks for beauty in friction, and finding a new start in the wreckage of something past.”
Previous single “Turning Point” introduced this world as its emotional and sonic cornerstone, a moment of rupture that signaled change.
From there, the album expands outward: “Prizefighter” builds from tape-manipulated fragments into a slow-burning crescendo, mirroring the exhaustion of staying too long in something that won’t shift; “Idol” strips back to piano and voice in a fragile plea to someone chasing their own undoing. Throughout, Pain Gain hold close to a central idea, that pain is not only endured, but instructive.
Despite arriving from distinct musical paths, Pain Gain is less a reinvention than a shared language discovered. Rooted in instinct and play, the project became an immersive, almost familial experience for its members, one that ultimately shaped a record concerned with transformation, and the clarity found in its aftermath. #paingainband