0 Miles Per Hour release new mini-album Credit: Photo by Hannah Howells
The latest release by 0 Miles Per Hour belies their youth. A palpable graduation, the indie-rock band’s new Shell EP doesn’t sound like a band of players who’ve barely cracked their 20s. But 0 Miles Per Hour have been doing this together for a long time.

Although now a young Orlando buzz band, the quartet of Chrissy McKeever (bass/vocals), Jack Dee (guitar/vocals), Kai Rodriguez (drums) and Jackson Bates (guitar) are childhood friends who essentially learned to play music together and formed 0 Miles Per Hour way back at the beginning of high school.

Moreover, ever since the band first emerged on the city’s music scene in 2019, the members have spread out to become key figures in the auspicious next wave of Orlando indie talent as players in other rising acts like hardcore stars Watts, shoegaze contenders Soap Box Derby and new screamo band Knaw. Yet it all started with 0 Miles Per Hour.

Recorded in Jacksonville with Drew Portalatin (Spanish Love Songs, Origami Angel, Save Face), the Shell EP is 0MPH’s most extended, serious and seasoned collection to date. Notably less bouncy than their earlier punk and pop-influenced work, these six songs are, sonically and emotionally, more complex indie-rock composites.

The melodic punk gales here blow with real force of emotion and mood. Meanwhile, the shoegaze and grunge sonics are a woolly blend that makes their sound simultaneously heady and heavy. It’s all whipped into a thick but well-defined froth that’s as equally suited to the 2020s as the 1990s.

“The band [has] so many different tastes and styles of music we love,”says McKeever. “Drawing inspiration from some of the other projects we’re in definitely comes through. The result is much different than some of the other stuff we put out in the past. [It’s] a mixed bag of shoegaze, emo and post-hardcore.”

0 Miles Per Hour have been steadily evolving in sound and stature. And Shell is the watershed mark of a new tier for the band, one that irrevocably pushes them from rough diamonds to confident pacesetters.

Released on Tampa punk label Armageddon Records, the Shell EP now streams everywhere and sits atop TLU’s Spotify Playlist. This week’s release show will feature 0 Miles Per Hour performing with Smelter, Blockade and Last Trip to Summer’s End. (7 p.m. Friday, March 21, Will’s Pub, $15)


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This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2025.

Music columnist.