Lipstick turn indie-rock urgency into something sharper and more addictive

On Better Ways to Spend the Night, the Wellington band refine their late-night aesthetic into a tighter, hook-driven EP built for movement and emotional fallout.

I hear Better Ways to Spend the Night as a band fully stepping into their identity and chasing momentum. Lipstick’s 2026 EP released o nthe 13th of March, arrives as a seven-track, 26-minute statement built on wiry guitars, pulsing bass lines, and a kind of restless romantic tension that never fully resolves. It is a sharpening of their sound, and that’s exactly how it plays. More direct and more immediate,

“Hardly Know Her” and “Untreated” lean into darker alt-rock edges, while “Make Believe” and “Short Strides” push the danceable side of their sound keeping the bite. There’s a constant push-pull between desire and fallout, escape and consequence, and I hear that tension not just in the lyrics but in the way the guitars sit slightly off-center from the rhythm section, like they’re always about to tip into chaos but never quite do. For me, that restraint is what makes the EP stick: it’s energetic and emotional without slipping into melodrama.

(•)> That's all, Folks! Check out Lipstick on the Pigeon Opinion Playlist