Boy Harsher brings its new album Get Mean to House of Blues Las Vegas on Tuesday, October 20, a show built on an unusual premise: the darkwave duo ended its romantic relationship in early 2024 and kept making music together anyway. The band has described Las Vegas as a city with a dedicated music-loving core beneath its noise.
Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller first crossed paths in 2013, according to Las Vegas Weekly, and the pair maintained a decade-long romantic relationship before it ended in 2024 — a split that heavily shaped the grief and heartbreak running through Get Mean, as reported by The FADER. Despite the breakup, Matthews and Muller chose to keep Boy Harsher going, releasing Get Mean on September 18 as their major label debut on Atlantic Records. The band formed in 2014, per Las Vegas Weekly, and the duo spoke with the outlet about the record ahead of their House of Blues stop.
A Record Written on the Road
Get Mean took shape across an unusually scattered production process. The 12-track album was recorded in eight different locations spanning the United States, Mexico, and Italy, following a stretch of travel and long-distance collaboration between the two members, The FADER reports. Matthews said she traveled across America and spent time in Mexico while writing the album, while Muller used his home gear and synthesizers pulled from a synth library in Texas to produce much of the music, according to Las Vegas Weekly's account.
The pair also reworked earlier sketches rather than building everything from scratch. Muller said the duo re-recorded demos using vintage synthesizers and layered in guitar, and that he would send instrumentals to Matthews, pursuing whichever ones felt instinctual once she responded. Matthews has described her own process as collecting notes and shaping them into a narrative only after a song and melody are locked in. On the track Jeans, the guitar reportedly replaced four or five electronic sounds, and Muller called the early song Ronny a touchstone for the album's overall atmosphere.
Lighter Music From a Dark Place
Matthews said she heard a rough version of Jeans while living in West Texas and it was the moment she felt they actually had an album. She has said she wanted the record to sound lighter and bigger, music that could lift her out of a dark emotional state rather than wallow in it, while Muller said the goal throughout was to make something sincere and cathartic. The result is a tracklist that moves between rejection, heartbreak, silliness, and more celebratory moments, including songs like Jeans and Faulty.
The band has leaned almost entirely on visuals to sell the record rather than traditional promotion. Boy Harsher reportedly put its entire marketing budget into music videos and did not buy advertisements or billboards, drawing stylistic inspiration for teasers and interludes from Calvin Klein advertisements. Get Mean includes music videos for Jeans, Hard Beat, and Faulty; the Faulty video was shot on 35-millimeter film, while the Hard Beat clip was self-directed by Boy Harsher alongside cinematographer Owen Smith-Clark and depicts a couple speeding down a highway with a Gregg Araki-esque quality, per The FADER.
Vegas's Hidden Gothic Underbelly
Boy Harsher brings its darkwave sound to House of Blues Las Vegas.
Who Else Is on the Bill
Boy Harsher performs Tuesday with support from True Blue and Kassie Krut. True Blue is the solo project of Copenhagen-based musician Maya Laner, a former bassist for Caroline Polachek and Porches, who released her debut full-length album Star Witness in October 2025, according to Interview Magazine. Kassie Krut, meanwhile, is a New York-based experimental electronic trio formed by Kasra Kurt and Eve Alpert — former members of the Philadelphia math-rock band Palm, which disbanded in 2023 — alongside producer Matt Anderegg, per Fire Talk Records.
