Sports Team offer up latest single ‘Bang Bang Bang’

Rowdy UK outfit Sports Team are back with their first release of 2025; what they probably didn’t expect, however, was for it to now strike even more of a chord than when it was first written.

The band’s latest, Western-flecked offering ‘Bang Bang Bang’ gets lifted from their forthcoming third album ‘Boys These Days’ - which is now set for release later this year, on 23rd May via Distiller Records/Bright Antenna - and while it was originally intended to be a lamentation on gun culture in the US, it’s since taken on a whole new meaning after the band were robbed at gunpoint on the first date of their North American tour last month.

“We would tour America a lot, and you see the AR-15 logo used on coffee bags, hats, t shirts, bumper stickers,” the band’s Rob Knaggs has said. “There’d be racks with tourist souvenirs, a Mickey Mouse hat, pet rocks, some local landmark postcard, then a AR-15 magnet and that’s where the seed of the lyrics came from. Then across the time we spent in America I was fleshing the lyrics out. There was a story I saw about NRA robocalls after the Newtown shooting, and it’s horrific. The immediate PR damage control machine. Then you go and drink in bars. Particularly in smaller towns, and people would hear the accent and ask you about guns. Bring them out and want you to hold them, or look at them. And it just seems like another weird part of the weird culture clash that touring America sometimes feels like. When I was writing the song I was a bit worried about how we would put it out. It’s not something that’s in your garden and you sort of think, however deeply you empathise with a problem, when it’s directly affecting other people you’re a bit nervous about clumsily trampling through it. 

“Imagining something like that happening and you always think it’ll feel dramatic,” he continues. “I think what was shocking was how blasé people were. You’re queuing for coffee. And then you’re trying to negotiate somebody waving a pistol around. The staff come and lock the doors, tell you to step away from the windows. You’re trying to barricade yourself in the toilet and they’re still doing the squirty cream on the drinks. Anyway now it all feels a bit ridiculous. You’re debating not putting the song out on the album, because it suddenly seems like some ridiculous stunt. Like it’s embarrassing. Everybody is so kind. Strangers offering help. Some local mom has seen it on cable news and messages offering any help, or somewhere safe to wait and figure things out, and ultimately, you’re fine.”

Listen to the track below now.