19 NOVEMBER 20-26, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | FIND MORE MUSIC COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/MUSIC Apocalypse Now EGO N FRIENDS UNLEASHES A VISUAL ALBUM CONFRONTING THE WORLD’S END. BY EMILY FERGUSON “The world is always ending for someone.” The words open over a black background, before grainy black-and-white footage shows a man falling through the air. The scene marks the beginning of the new visual album from Denver artist ego n friends, or ego for short, and it’s his favorite project so far. If It Never Ends is already available to stream, but the visual album will drop with a viewing party at the Department of Creative Pursuits on December 5. And before that, ego will be performing at the Bluebird Theater on Saturday, November 29, opening for Keenan TreVon alongside E.M.E. and AC Yung. With such widespread accessibility to global issues — whether videos of bombings or infl uencers becoming quasi-politicos — it’s easy to succumb to the throes of existential- ism. But If It Never Ends provides a different position; the name itself implies a question: Would you be doing anything differently, whether the world were ending or not? Ego has observed that life is rife with paradox, and that’s a theme he has pursued in his music. His last release was named are u alone?, yet it was fi lled with collaborations with other local artists. His albums’ titles pose a prompt, and his music provides the answer – sometimes an unexpected one. “This album is called If It Never Ends, and it’s about the world ending, or more so about the feelings that come with the feeling that the world is ending,” ego says. “So the paradox is, people are going to come with this feeling that it’s apocalyptic, but the album itself is meant to uplift you from that, to feel confi dent in your path amidst this seemingly crumbling world.” He had recorded a song for the album back in January, before going to visit family in India, where he recorded the bones for two more tracks. “Making music in India made me think about reality differently be- cause of what I was experiencing,” he says. “As immigrants, we feel detached from our cultures a lot of the time, because I’m not necessarily seen as an ‘American’ [here], but my cousins see me as way more American than Indian. So there’s always this back and forth, and then there’s this...pride that comes from being an immigrant and being proud of your culture.” However, he adds, “I don’t think I ever thought about generational trauma until I got there for the fi rst time as a full adult. ... It just kind of shocked me, because my parents just gave me ‘good’ India; they’re not going to talk about the trauma. So that whole trip was a mind-expanding experience.” Ego pursued the ensuing emotions with creativity, as he also digested international policies that were making daily headlines. And while the album serves as a reminder that your own choices and actions could make the world less bleak, ego doesn’t use the songs as a salvo against specifi c injustices or absurdities plaguing the country (though there would be many to choose from). That choice has made the tunes more timeless, with enough shelf life to take people through disasters decades to come. “A lot of music is very specifi c right now, which is kind of tiring me out because it takes away from the poetry in a lot of ways,” ego says. “Rather than just giving an idea away, it’s painting a picture and a feeling.” The visual album helps illustrate the tracks, too. Each of the videos is shot in one take, showing ego roaming around different locations in a Utah desert. At one moment, he’s seemingly being chased through an aban- doned trailer park; the next, he’s tied to a chair in front of a dusty-red mountain range, before we fi nd him inside a graffi ti-fi lled, decrepit building, trying to free his bound wrists. “There were so many crazy, weird spiri- tual things that kind of aligned with this whole thing,” ego says. He enlisted his team, which included Christian Hundley (director), Andrew Han- son (photography director), Dan Stubbs (col- orist) and Jackson Lowry (assistant director). When he told a friend he was planning to head to a desert with the crew to shoot, the friend recommended a particular spot in Moab. At that point, ego wasn’t sure they would be trav- eling out of state; by the time the team decided on Moab, ego had forgotten the specifi c place his friend had suggested. “And then we went to that exact same patch of fucking land,” ego says. “I love shit like that, because it feels like it’s the universe affi rming that you’re doing the right thing. Everything just ties together in this beautiful way.” Once at the site, “We shot really cool one- shot videos, two of them, and then we had two more to shoot that weekend, and then we had two more to shoot another weekend,” he says. “But halfway through that four- shot weekend, we realized, ‘Oh, my god, we should be making this a narrative album.’” Throughout the series, the desolate land- scape and ego as its only occupant add weight to the album’s overall message of singular creativity. For ego, If It Never Ends wasn’t about making another hit; he’s had his share already – his 2022 song “Lose All Control” currently has more than 200K streams on Spotify alone. “With this project, it was defi nitely super internal from the jump and felt like it just channeled out of me,” ego says. “And with that comes not doing crazy-lyric, super-hot- take TikTok clips...I’m over all that. If you look at the world, why would you do that? Why would you not make genuine art right now? Why would I still try to blow up?” Ego is a somewhat ironic moniker for such a collaborative musician; he explains that the name originated from when he was severely ill with an autoimmune disease. “Music was the only place where I could actually put in a confi dent version of my per- sonality,” he says. “Music was the only space where I could have any semblance of an ego. Now, as my career has grown, it’s more a reminder to just not continued on page 20 Ego n friends’ new album is available to stream. MUSIC A still from the new visual album. CHRISTIAN HUNDLEY CHRISTIAN HUNDLEY
