Hippo Campus Somehow Blew Up And Stayed A Secret At The Same Time

I think about that a lot honestly, how a band can have a song sitting at 137 million streams and still feel like something you have to put people onto.

Landmark was my way in, same as it was for a ton of people, that's just how the numbers shake out. Way It Goes and Buttercup are the entry point tracks and once you hear them you get why. Way It Goes has that guitar line that just refuses to let go of you, it sticks around way longer than it has any right to. Buttercup does this thing where it sounds sad and bouncy at the exact same time, which is a very specific trick, and they've basically built a career out of being good at it.

Part of why Way It Goes has the numbers it does is Maid, the Netflix show from 2021, which used it in an episode and sent a real wave of people down the same rabbit hole I went down. That's a genuinely huge cultural moment for a band to land, one of Netflix's most watched shows of that year putting your song in front of that many eyeballs, and I still think about how much bigger this band could be if they'd found a way to keep riding that into everything they released after.

Baseball throws a little wrinkle in the timeline because it's not actually off Landmark, it's the lead track off warm glow, the EP they dropped later that same year. It was demoed during the Landmark sessions and got cut, which honestly was probably the right call for how that album flows, but on its own baseball is one of the most purely fun songs they've ever made. It sounds exactly like the title says it should, high summer, a little shameless about it, and I mean that as a compliment.

But LP3 is where I actually fell for the band instead of just liking the songs. Bang Bang is one of those tracks I can't skip no matter what mood I'm in, it's got this urgency to it like the band is trying to outrun something, and I mean that as the highest compliment. Ride or Die lives right next to it in my head, same album same energy, and honestly I think it might be the better song some days, I go back and forth on it constantly.

Then there's South, which I will play loud in the car specifically because it demands it. Some songs are made for headphones and quiet rooms and South is not one of them. Roll the windows down for that one.

One more before we get to Flood. Bad Dream Baby, off the Good Dog, Bad Dream EP from 2021, is a deeper cut but it's stuck with me for reasons I can't fully justify. There's a manic energy running through that song, horns stabbing in and out, genuinely dark stuff buried under a bouncy arrangement, and every time I hear it I swear I'm getting a little Oingo Boingo out of it. I might be reaching, I haven't found anyone else who hears it, but that tension between playful and demented is exactly the vibe.

For what it's worth, the band themselves have pushed back for years on being compared to Vampire Weekend, which is the comparison everybody reaches for because of the clean guitar tones and the rim shots on the drums. Early on they said their actual reference points were Bombay Bicycle Club, Last Dinosaurs, Little Comets, and a defunct Manchester band called WU LYF that apparently mattered to them more philosophically than sonically. Doesn't totally surprise me hearing it laid out like that, there's a nervier, more post-punk edge under all the hooks once you're listening for it.

Here's the part I actually sat down to write this for though. Flood came out in 2024 and I think it might be one of their best records front to back, and it did not get anywhere close to the attention it deserved.

Some context that makes it hit harder for me once I found out about it. They made this record in about ten days out at a studio in the middle of the desert near the Texas border, after coming out of a stretch that included getting sober and going to group therapy together as a band, on top of losing someone close to them not long after LP3 came out. Jake Luppen has talked about the whole album basically being an exercise in learning to feel everything at once instead of running from it, and once you know that, a lot of these songs land different.

Here's where I've landed on it, song by song, at least for now.

Everything At Once gets me every single time, no exaggeration. There's a moment in that song that just wrecks me a little and I couldn't tell you exactly why if you asked, it just does the thing.

Paranoid is tighter and more anxious than most of the record around it, which fits the title. Sounds calm enough on a first listen and then you actually pay attention to what's happening underneath it.

flood, the title track, is patient in a way I don't think enough people gave it credit for. It doesn't rush to make its point and I respect it more the more times I hear it.

Tooth Fairy is weird in the way I want Hippo Campus to be weird. They've never been a band that plays it safe and this one proves it, still not sure I've fully cracked what it's doing and I like that about it.

Fences does quieter, more interior work than the singles usually get to. Feels like one of those songs that opens up more the longer it sits with you.

Madman has this restlessness running underneath it that I keep coming back to, feels like the record catching its breath right before the last stretch.

Forget It almost didn't make this list and I would have been wrong to leave it off. It's one of the quieter closing tracks on the album but it might be sneaking up as one of my favorites on the whole thing, I might still change my mind on that.

Worth just saying it plainly at this point, that's seven songs off a thirteen track album. More than half the record made this list and I'm not even a little embarrassed about it. If you've got any love for indie rock at all, this one's for you.

I caught the Flood tour here in Boston in February 2025 at MGM Music Hall and it was one of the better shows I've been to in a while. Petey opened and more than earned the crowd he had, he's going to get his own spotlight around here eventually so I'll leave it at that for now, but the two of them back to back made for a genuinely great night.

I don't really have a big thesis here. I just think more people should be living inside flood the way Landmark lived inside everyone's Spotify Wrapped a few years back. Hippo Campus earned that kind of reach once already. This one deserves a second round of it.