American Road Trip: Arkansas - LEVELS Ignite With ‘Covert One’

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Published 29 August 2025 by Ned Tepper

Arkansas doesn’t hum, it flickers. Out of that neon buzz comes LEVELS, a cyber-industrial outfit splicing pop precision into serrated metal, then driving the whole thing with drum and bass footwork. The Central Arkansas quartet featuring Kolby Carignan, Jager Felice, Jacob Hubbard and Dalton Kennerly have been grinding long enough to know the difference between noise and signal. They choose signal.

Their latest single ‘Covert One’ lands like a cold blade. Glitched percussion, strafing guitars, and a hook that blooms only after the bruises form. It arrives with a stark visualiser and a simple message: emotional fallout isn’t cinematic, it’s corrosive. Hit play and you can hear the circuitry fry.

The band frame ‘Covert One’ as a seven stage spiral, love dressed up as safety, manipulation hiding in plain sight, defiance as the last viable exit. Or, in their words, it “drags you through the wreckage of a love that masquerades as safety.” That’s not melodrama, it’s diagnosis.

If you clocked ‘Strange Things’ (below) earlier this year, you’ll recognise the palette: chrome tinted mood, precision edits, and a visual language that belongs under streetlights after midnight. That one arrived with a video directed by Kennerly himself, sharpening the band’s DIY edge while they refine the cyber-gloom they’ve been sketching for years.

None of this popped up out of nowhere. ‘Pulse’ on SharpTone Records was the hinge moment, millions of streams, a cleaner line on who they are, and a stronger swing between digital grit and actual feeling. Plenty of bands chase the algorithm, LEVELS chase connection, then weaponise it.

‘Covert One’ doesn’t reinvent LEVELS, it clarifies them. Arkansas, distilled: inventive, unsentimental, laser-focused. Cue it up, then dive the essential clips and socials we’ve parked at the end. If this is where their next chapter starts, the venues on your side of the map should probably brace.