If waking up on Friday, January 2—the first music release day of 2026—to a new album from one of Portland’s best bands isn’t a potent foreshadowing of another incredible music year for this city, I don’t know what is.
The band in question? Dustbunny. A Portland-based quintet of punks standing firmly at many of the intersections making Rip City just that, a ripper city to live and create in. The band is queer, of color, femme, and wildly community-oriented. Did I see members of Dustbunny going hard on New Years Eve at Trouble Bar, watching their friends in Nonbinary Girlfriend and Forty Feet Tall as midnight was fast approaching? Yes! Are we looking forward to their album release show at Mississippi Studios on January 3 with fellow local baddies Femme Cell and Pileup? Yes!
The album in question? Offerings for Weary Dogs. A 10-track lesson in beautifully vulnerable self-awareness not often heard on a sophomore LP. Not a concept album pre se, Offerings for Weary Dogs builds on the motifs appearing on the band’s 2024 debut Machinery—interpersonal connection between the album’s narrator(s) and their lovers, exes, friends, and, most importantly, theirselves. If these songs are sonic offerings for weary dogs… woof woof.
Band leader and songwriter supreme Chloe Flores cracks herself open from the first whispered line of Offerings-opener “Dreamt I Did It,” with “Only in my dreams do I think of killing you.” The acoustic guitar chords strummed so heavenly and words sung so earnestly that no one can be blamed when, on an initial listen, the song comes across as smitten as opposed to aching. But the same might be said for Mazzy Star’s dream pop opus, “Fade Into You.”
More so than most of their dream pop and shoegaze forebears, Dustbunny dissolves the concept of binaries, playfully and painfully building on western societal tropes including male-female, love-hate, and straight-queer—only to undo the this’s or that’s, the me’s or you’s; replacing the “or’s” with “and’s.” It’s not Flores versus anyone, it’s Flores and the intense complexities of human understanding and personal evolution. It’s not me versus you, it’s us and how do we continue while navigating the innumerable nuanced ways we float through the world. All of which are moving targets, something Dustbunny is unbelievably adept at metastasizing into music that feels like the lush new beginnings needed to usher in 2026 with.
Initially started as a solo project in 2019, Flores, a Texas transplant, expanded the singular guitar and vocals of Dustbunny into a quartet for the band’s first show in 2023, opening for Orchid Tooth at NE Going’s Xhurch. The initial full band lineup included bassist Shanea, lead guitarist Delaney Walatka, and drummer Evan Mason-White, later filling out with second lead guitarist Dan Peterson. Taking into account Dustbunny’s roster—members playing in other local heaters Kitten Tools, Dan Maybe, Shanea’s solo project, Guitar, et. al—community-building bordering on civic duty permeates the ethos of the band.
Related: Read our review of Guitar’s 2025 album We’re Heading to the Lake.
Offerings for Weary Dogs’ first single, “Jane is Sideways,” dropped almost a year ago, teasing an unannounced album that, if the new track was anything to go by, would not only be a noisy continuation of the band’s debut, but would also offer a deeper introspection only achievable with time and lived experience.
Playing with a soft-heavy binary—a spectrum existing within us all—Flores’ vocal drawl croons of Jane’s penchant for acting like a wrecking ball, while not letting that destruction eclipse what is needed to physically form a ball: The curling of one’s knees into the chest. A protective pose associated with the fetal position. Flores knows Jane is gonna make a man out of her, but she also knows Jane is “gonna make her man bleed.” The narrative multitudes Jane contains are delivered over melodic noise akin to the garage-country on The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Stoned & Dethroned. “There’s nothing like fucking up / To teach you how to restart,” Jane reminds as the new year unfurls with possibility. If Jane is a person inside Flores is beside the point because everyone has a Jane somewhere inside.
Late-Offerings’ wall-of-sound track “Crooked Wing” plays with the quiet-loud binary deeply experimented with by early ’90s shoegaze giants, situating Dustbunny as one of Portland’s lushest offerings to the expansive pools of “nugaze.” The three-way chunky chords and guitar harmonies drench and bloom in turn as if soundtracking the dramatics of a PNW spring, cutting out just as suddenly, giving way to album-closer “Storm Drain,” easily the most bedroom of the album’s songs. Gusting winds frame Flores’ vocals and a singular acoustic guitar that would make even Liz Harris’ heart break.
Offerings for Weary Dogs is out now and available through the band’s Bandcamp as limited tapes (by prolific Portland label Pleasure Tapes) and as a digital download. Dustbunny play a release show at Mississippi Studios on January 3 with Femme Cell and Pileup, more info here.
Nolan Parker
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