WATERPARKS MAKES THE HEADLINES WITH NEW SINGLE ‘PROWLER’

April 17, 2026

4–7 minutes

Have you read the paper? Waterparks just dropped their newest single “PROWLER,” a heavy, sonic rollercoaster taking listeners on a ride through the dark facets of the ruthless music industry — one that wants to praise, but also destroy.

On April 16, Waterparks, the Texas trio of Awsten Knight (vocals), Geoff Wigington (guitar) and Otto Wood (drums), announced their highly anticipated sixth studio album JINX to a fanbase who had been theorizing the name for months. The 13-track album is set to be released on July 24, and fans couldn’t be more excited to finally get new music in their hands after years of waiting. Intellectual Property, their fifth album, was released on April 14, 2023, nearly three years exactly to the date of JINX’s announcement.

“PROWLER” marks the fourth single to be released off of the new album, but gives fans the first proper step into the world we now know as JINX.

Waterparks is known for genre bending in ways that many bands would never try to attempt, and their newest release might be one of the most adventurous singles the band has ever put out. They have perfected the art of contrasting gritty, hard-hitting instrumentals with deeply personal lyrics, and “PROWLER” is no exception. Knight’s raw, honest lyrics get under the skin as the production builds to cinematic levels, leaving listeners on the edge of their seat after every line.

The band just finished up their U.S. and European legs of the Prowler Tour where they built hype for the new album by teasing a snippet of the tour’s namesake live every night. The anticipation has been high for “PROWLER” after becoming a fan favorite during the tour, but the studio version exceeded fan’s expectations by miles. Playing this song live before releasing the studio version feels like a very intentional choice from Waterparks, and hearing the heavy guitar riffs carve through the first verse and the bass shake your chest in the crowd is somehow still portrayed perfectly even in the studio version. It is incredibly hard for bands to replicate that raw feeling of a live performance, but arguably Waterparks may have exceeded it with this release.

The intro of the song begins with an adlib from a May 2025 Deuxmoi podcast where the host found the band for the first time that is now forever immortalized:

“Wait, Waterparks / If this is heavy metal I’m gonna be so fucking pissed.”

In the original Deuxmoi clip, the quote is hilariously followed by their popular 2016 single “Stupid for You,” but pairing this audio with the hard hitting beat drop and Knight yelling “Let that shit ride” to start off “PROWLER” takes this song to a new level.

Underneath the heavy instrumentation is a very personal message from Knight. The opening lines are already a punch to the gut, opening with the shocking “I lost every father figure that I had in LA this year / I tried to rewind, but life is unkind to the sincere” portraying hurt and anger reminiscent of some of their heavier work, such as “TANTRUM” and “LIKE IT.” Knight goes on to explain how just because he is a singer does not mean that he should be heralded as a savior, no matter what the headlines may say about him, or even just about celebrities in general.

Knight’s vulnerability in his writing shows greatly in this track, peeling back the curtain on how ruthless the industry can be, even from people that may have held their trust in the past. This continues into the second verse, where Knight gets even more emotional, singing about getting crushed by societal pressure through clever diamond metaphors, and how the past few years of his career has affected him:

“Lost my team / My friends / It’s way too much to handle.”

Every moment of this track has incredible detail added into the background such as swords being unsheathed, crows cawing and clocks ticking. The bridge is truly haunting, with distorted voices layering over each other and feeling like they are circling in as they taunt the listener.

“We’re gonna take care of everything / Don’t even worry about it / Trust in the universe / You will be loved. Loved.”

Knight’s ability to paint such vivid imagery with the production on this track throws the listener into the driver’s seat of the story as the song closes in on the last chorus. The instrumental fades as Knight lowers his voice to a whisper, drawing out the last moments quieter and quieter as he repeats “So I’ll cross my heart / And I’ll X my eyes / If it’s do or die / Let that shit ride.” From beginning to end this song truly morphs into something else entirely, paralleling how quickly one can fall down the rabbit hole in search of the thing they want most.

Waterparks has released a broad spectrum of singles for the new album so far. The pop-rock lead single “RED GUITAR” delivered on setting the new tone of this era after the 2024 cancellation of their album INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 2: LOST IN THE PROPERTY. Pairing this with the second single “IF LYRICS WERE CONFIDENTIAL,” it was clear that Knight had a lot to get off his chest and did it in the genre-bending way that only he could. The third single, “ANY MINUTE NOW,” pivots slightly with a softer ballad about growing up and trying to figure out what life even means. The theme of time runs through all of the singles, and continues to do so with “PROWLER” as well.

This is now the longest amount of time between album releases that Waterparks has had so far, but they did a great job of keeping the fans well-fed until the album was announced. This past week, Waterparks released five music videos in five days for the singles that are out so far, each one telling more of the story that is building as this new era starts to unfold.