Close your eyes and imagine the soundtrack to a night out you didn’t plan but needed anyway; warped synths, jagged tempos, and vocals shifting from sweet to sardonic in a heartbeat. With Swimming Pool Disco, Los Angeles’ four-piece outfit Rincs delivers alt-pop with bite, turning vulnerability into a power move. This six-track EP doesn’t settle—it slinks, spirals, and sashays through post-punk, prog, new wave, and jangly indie with a chaotic elegance. But Rincs doesn’t just genre-hop for sport; each stylistic swerve reveals another facet of their inner world: fierce, funny, flawed, and human.
From the opening seconds, Swimming Pool Disco pulses with the energy of a midnight joyride—reckless, electric, a little heartbroken. You feel it in the shape-shifting arrangements of “Fiat to Fear,” in the refusal to play by pop’s unspoken rules. The music zigs where you expect it to zag like it’s on replay or playing at 2x speed. Gritty guitars, fleeting drums, and glitchy synths clash beautifully. Vocalist Rebeca Ramirez’s voice is the anchor through it all—by turns sultry, vulnerable, caustic, or soaring, often within a single line.
A distinct emotional arc weaves through the numbers, starting with raw anxiety and unease in “Fiat to Fear,” moving through frustration and cynicism in the title song, deepening into vulnerability and self-scrutiny on “Sugarcoat,” and ending with a bittersweet release in “Bobcat IV.”
Let’s rewind to “Fiat to Fear,” a gritty song that feels like running from something, tearing down the 405 with ghosts in the rearview, the first line, “I’m scared,” delivered in a flat, deadpan tone only makes it hit harder, rewinding in your head. It’s a blunt opening, but Rincs doesn’t coddle it—they let that fear drive the engine, weaponizing panic into propulsion. There’s the sonic chaos; ragged riffs cut through the mix, paired with sudden shifts nodding to prog’s love of the unpredictable all underpinned by a throbbing bassline.
But for all its restlessness, the project doesn’t really posture. From the start, it mimes the messiness of daily life through its restless shifts in mood and tone, hazy melodies mirror emotional burnout, and sounds alternate between whispered acquiescence and louder defiance. The glittering title track is a perfect case: a disco-adjacent banger soaked in sarcasm and self-awareness. “I’m not lazy, though I confess to negligence,” Rameriez sings, the kind of line that both stings and smirks. There’s joy in the groove, sure—but something darker lurks beneath, like the “cheap pink paint peeling off the backyard fence” or “a predatory ambulance.” Even as the beat begs you to dance, the lyrics keep your eyes wide open.
The theme of opting out from “Swimming Pool Disco” recurs across the EP—most notably in “Don’t Wanna Go to the Pool,” a jangly, Go-Go’s-meets-R.E.M. gem turning social withdrawal into something like a lifestyle brand by framing isolation as a conscious, almost stylish choice. “Getting addicted to nobody” is one of Rincs’ most quietly brilliant lines. It is ironic, perhaps, but sincere in its craving for disconnection in an always-online world because, under its wry tone, its execution suggests a genuine weariness with constant connectivity and social overload.
“Sugarcoat” marks a turning, or rather progressive, point—the rhythm shifts into a slow, unsettling pulse contrasting the earlier tracks’ urgency. Here, the emotional stakes climb higher. The part-glossy surfaces begin to crack into something sweetly sinister; maybe it’s the warped enunciation in vocalist Ramirez’s diction rendering the sentences incomprehensible, or the cheeky instrumentation layered underneath the tone of menace. But this is where Swimming Pool Disco peels back its layers to reveal a deeper ache of masking true feelings below a polished surface. The production swells with cinematic tension, echoing a conflict in half-bits revelations: “She warned me…”, “I sugarcoat…”, “I’m happy but…”. It’s a confrontation not with someone else, but with yourself, the way we sometimes lie to make things bearable. It’s a moment where Rincs lets discomfort ring out loud. Ramirez’s vocal swings from soft to searing, a tightrope act never missing a step.
The penultimate cut, “Tarp,” begins as a whisper and ends as a slow-burn crescendo, leaning into indie-pop while never quite settling into anything so tidy. It’s a study in restraint—holding back just enough to let the rawness creep in, like in the lyrics: “Keep my dark ass remarks to myself / Biodegrade me…” The lyrics toy with a larger emotional terrain of the album: how much to show, and what to cover up. This tension plays out in the manner of expression, where moments of honesty like in “Sugarcoat” are balanced with the guardedness of this record, suggesting the struggle to open up while protecting oneself from judgment.
By the time the project arrives at its closer, “Bobcat IV,” the tension breaks. With its distorted Glasgow jangle and retro sheen, it feels like something that could’ve scored the end credits of a John Hughes movie. It’s scrappy, shoegazey, and joyfully off-kilter, echoing into the lyrics: “Scared the bobcat downhill / Underdressed to kill /…Tragic undercat.” It leaves the listener not with answers, but with release—a letting go of the need for resolution.
And that’s what makes Swimming Pool Disco more than a sum of its genre tricks or clever lines. It’s not just about heartbreak or identity or growing up weird in a world that doesn’t quite make room for you—it’s about all of that, tangled together in 11 minutes of musical honesty. It isn’t vulnerability as oversharing; it’s curated chaos, where pain shows up in glitter, glitches, and unexpected punchlines. Rincs doesn’t sugarcoat the lows, nor do they glamorize the highs. They just live in it, fully. And maybe invite you to gatecrash the experience. Listening feels like sneaking into a stranger’s backyard party and realizing, halfway through your third drink, that you belong.
