FREE IN-STORE PICKUP, AND FREE SHIPPING ON PURCHASES OVER $100 IN THE USA!
Ekko Astral

the beltway is burning (Red in Red Vinyl) [4/24/2026]

$26.99

Shipping & Pick-Up

SHIPPING POLICY

We offer FREE shipping on orders of $100 or more. All media orders (vinyl/CD/cassette) will ship via USPS media mail. Please be aware that we cannot provide free multiple shipments for a single order, so if your order includes pre-order items, the entire order will be held until all items are in stock and ready to be shipped.

Your tracking information usually updates within 24-72 hours. Once your order departs from our facility, we no longer have control over it. For assistance with missing packages, kindly reach out to your local post office branch. Please note that we are not responsible for stolen packages and are not able to refund you for your purchase if your package was stolen after delivery. Shipping times may vary.


FREE IN-STORE PICKUP

If you are local, we offer FREE in-store pickup on online orders.  Please note, however, that using Apple Pay at checkout will auto-fill a shipping charge and will not allow you the option to choose free in-store pickup. In other words, if you wish to choose free in-store pickup at checkout, you must checkout without using an accelerated payment method like Apple Pay.

Release Date: 5/8/2026  (Pre-orders will be shipped or available for in-store pickup within 3 days of expected release date. Please note release dates are subject to change. For orders placed that have other items along with the pre-orders, all items will be held until every item from the order is available to ship.)

**This title is limited to 1 per customer. Any order placed for more than 1 will be cancelled.**

When Ekko Astral dropped their searing debut pink balloons in 2024, it would be another year and change before Trump took office and deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C. Recorded immediately after the 2024 U.S. General Election, Ekko Astral’s second album the beltway is burning was always intended as a real-time historical document in the form of a dark comedy. Each song plays out like a vignette, with Ekko Astral beckoning listeners into their fictionalized version of The Beltway, in which Adam Sandler is a god-president and the DMV has become a demilitarized zone, a wasteland run by butt rockers and Soundcloud rappers.

On the surrealist lead single “lil xan goes to washington,” the titular character travels to D.C. to lobby for addiction assistance legislation before succumbing to the cartoonish horror that is K Street, ultimately becoming a sellout himself. Such noisy, absurd caricatures abound on beltway, whose anchors are simultaneously heavier, poppier, and more complex than on predecessor pink balloons.

Take the album’s pop diamond “lovesick american romance”: a 90s rock-indebted anthem that snarls at mainstream culture’s embrace of the manosphere. And then there’s the album’s centerpiece, “this is not a call to action but a lamentation on the situation at hand (or, capital riot),” which sees the band take an entirely new direction in a stretched-out, climactic barn-burner that invites listeners into the band’s funhouse version of D.C.

Where pink balloons was written to uplift, the beltway is burning is meant to remind you of the stakes. On penultimate track “blood mountain,” Holzman asks “if I don’t know what’s wrong / how can it be righted?” This kind of tension is omnipresent in Ekko Astral’s work, grounding beltway in our present reality, injecting urgency and realism into each song despite their surrealist contours.

Red in Red Vinyl

UPC: 634457234871

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Ekko Astral - the beltway is burning album cover and red in red vinyl.
Ekko Astral

the beltway is burning (Red in Red Vinyl) [4/24/2026]

$26.99

Release Date: 5/8/2026  (Pre-orders will be shipped or available for in-store pickup within 3 days of expected release date. Please note release dates are subject to change. For orders placed that have other items along with the pre-orders, all items will be held until every item from the order is available to ship.)

**This title is limited to 1 per customer. Any order placed for more than 1 will be cancelled.**

When Ekko Astral dropped their searing debut pink balloons in 2024, it would be another year and change before Trump took office and deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C. Recorded immediately after the 2024 U.S. General Election, Ekko Astral’s second album the beltway is burning was always intended as a real-time historical document in the form of a dark comedy. Each song plays out like a vignette, with Ekko Astral beckoning listeners into their fictionalized version of The Beltway, in which Adam Sandler is a god-president and the DMV has become a demilitarized zone, a wasteland run by butt rockers and Soundcloud rappers.

On the surrealist lead single “lil xan goes to washington,” the titular character travels to D.C. to lobby for addiction assistance legislation before succumbing to the cartoonish horror that is K Street, ultimately becoming a sellout himself. Such noisy, absurd caricatures abound on beltway, whose anchors are simultaneously heavier, poppier, and more complex than on predecessor pink balloons.

Take the album’s pop diamond “lovesick american romance”: a 90s rock-indebted anthem that snarls at mainstream culture’s embrace of the manosphere. And then there’s the album’s centerpiece, “this is not a call to action but a lamentation on the situation at hand (or, capital riot),” which sees the band take an entirely new direction in a stretched-out, climactic barn-burner that invites listeners into the band’s funhouse version of D.C.

Where pink balloons was written to uplift, the beltway is burning is meant to remind you of the stakes. On penultimate track “blood mountain,” Holzman asks “if I don’t know what’s wrong / how can it be righted?” This kind of tension is omnipresent in Ekko Astral’s work, grounding beltway in our present reality, injecting urgency and realism into each song despite their surrealist contours.

Red in Red Vinyl

UPC: 634457234871

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