Madrone is a band from California. Formed in Berkeley, California by Reoh Darwell (drums, guitar, vocals), Matthew Estolano (bass, vocals), and Maya Ofek (guitar, vocals), the band members now live in new portions of California’s chaparral (LA, San Jose, & El Cajon). Madrone’s eponymous self-recorded and self-released debut album, Eponymous Debut Masterpiece, came out on June 20, 2025 (the summer solstice).
The title for Madrone’s debut album may come off a bit arrogant, but this is not the type of band to claim without having the music to back it up. The young band proves they have something special on their hands with “Lucifer,” a highlight from their freshly released LP. The hazy, bright single lands somewhere between indie rock and shoegaze, adding a layer of hypnotic fusion to the song. Madrone crafted a dense bed of distortion that warps and twists into moments of subtle bliss, only to transition back into searing, droning, fuzzy buzzes. The simplistic yet potent arrangement gives “Lucifer” its dark undertones, and while it is easy to get lost in the forest of textures, Ofek’s songwriting adds another mystical layer to the unforgettable single. Lyrically, the band explores every aspect of love. From irreversible heartbreak to the dough-eyed moment love begins to blossom, “Lucifer” takes the complexity of these emotions and spins them into a moving performance. Eponymous Debut Masterpiece is out now, and the poetically vulnerable “Lucifer” should be all the reason you need to sprint and hear the rest of Madrone’s stellar debut.
“The Lucifer of this song is a yearning, a self-indulgent one, to become such an important love to somebody, that they can’t help but see you as the Devil once it’s over. It sees us all as a medium, channeling the life and death of love and the love of death and life. And all of the meaning that those things provide to life, and how desperately we seek it,” explains the band when asked about “Lucifer.” “The lyrics arrived to Maya in pre-dawn light, while she cleaned the soda machine at the pizza place where she had worked. The music to Reoh while driving through the night, his sedan carrying obscure cargo to tech companies. The production to Mat while sleeping in a hotel room in Daly City, perched above the Cow Palace, where the Warriors once won the Championship. We all were mediums for this song; through it, we all, for a moment, came into contact with that thing beyond, the thing which we all know must exist, but can only grasp briefly, or sometimes not at all.”
