Julie Hough - of Dublin indie grunge band HAVVK - and Stephen Hale - BARQ alum -  have joined forces on their new alt-pop project PostLast. Today, they release their debut single 'Connect 4' via Veta Records.

An upbeat escape into the joy and fragility of making friends as a grown-up, the song is about rediscovering your inner-child through connection with others, and remembering how to switch off, play and dance with reckless abandon.

"Working on this project has been a very different experience from any previous group I've been a part of. We jumped straight into collaborating with the main aim being that we should just enjoy the process," Hale says of this new chapter. "This meant that I was regularly treated to fantastic surprises when the weird little instrumental demo I'd make would come back to me in the shape of a pop song, with Julie's lyrics and melodies always sparking new ideas and interesting diversions from whatever I had thought the song might turn into.”

Hough and Hale first connected while completing a joint headline tour of Ireland and the UK in 2017 with their respective bands, HAVVK and BARQ. Over the past year they have been writing in secret, carefully preparing each element of their collaboration, with more on the way for the coming year.

“PostLast has been like a little fever-dream escape from all of my regular projects. We come from such different musical backgrounds and have such different musical minds, so there was no preconception about what the project would sound like," Hough comments. "I was very stream of consciousness when working on the demos. I’ve always loved Stephen’s guitar playing, and it was really interesting to have a departure from rock music and to work on a project with no previous releases to live up to.”