-- FRITZ MICHEL — Introducing… Young Allies

Young Allies Announce Long Island City Residency, Debut EP + Release Lead Single “Fingers Entwined” with New Music Video

New York-based ensemble emerges from Fritz Michel’s solo work with a collaborative, live-driven sound rooted in presence, performance, and shared creation

STREAM “Fingers Entwined” on all digital platforms

WATCH the official music video for “Fingers Entwined”

PRE-SAVE the Fingers Entwined EP

Young Allies, the New York-based band led by singer, songwriter, and actor Fritz Michel, officially step into focus today with the release of their new single “Fingers Entwined,” the title track from their debut EP, out Friday, July 24th, and the announcement of an ongoing residency in Long Island City.

The release marks a turning point for Michel, whose years of writing and recording under his own name have evolved into something more fluid and collaborative. What began as a solo project has opened outward into a fully realized band – one shaped as much by interplay and instinct as by authorship.

That evolution now has a name: Young Allies.

Anchored by their Long Island City residency and the upcoming EP, Young Allies is built around a simple idea that feels increasingly rare – music created through real-time collaboration. Not assembled piece by piece or overworked into polish, but shaped through presence: listening, reacting, and staying in the room long enough for something honest to take form.

“What you hear on the recordings is a map of habits and arguments, late-night jokes, an impossible perfect take after an hour of trying, and the quiet between songs when everyone listens to what the other person is doing,” says bassist Gavin Price.

The result is a sound that feels understated but deeply intentional, where a songwriter’s interior voice expands into something immersive and shared. Songs don’t arrive fully formed – they gather. Arrangements shift depending on who is in the room. The music moves with a kind of internal weather, building and releasing in ways that feel intuitive rather than prescribed.

Production still from Fingers Entwined: Dorothy locked in a bubble

Caption: Young Allies x Stills From “Fingers Entwined” Official Music Video

The band features Michel on vocals and guitar, alongside guitarist and co-producer Tosh Sheridan, bassist Gavin Price, drummer Isaac Gardner (Blue Man Group), keyboardist Phil Kadet, and vocalist Shelly Bhushan. Nearly everyone sings, and the dynamic remains deliberately collective, shaped by a shared commitment to collaboration.

That approach carries through to “Fingers Entwined,” the band’s first release from the upcoming EP. The track began with a visual reference – double-exposed Polaroids by artist Natalie White – and unfolds into a meditation on entanglement and chance, using the language of backgammon as a metaphor for the shifting stakes of human relationships.

The accompanying video expands on a larger visual universe Michel and Price have been building across multiple releases. Drawing from a loose internal mythology that threads through earlier videos like “We Are What We Are,” “On The Rocks,” and “Suddenly You Love Me,” the new video places Michel inside a shifting world of scale and perspective – one where miniature realities and layered images collide. Inspired in part by the lingering afterlife of The Wizard of Oz, the video explores what happens after the journey ends: when characters remain, time continues, and identity begins to fracture and reform. The result is a surreal, interconnected visual narrative that invites deeper exploration across the band’s catalog.

Young Allies’ collaborative instinct is rooted in Michel’s broader creative background. Born in France to American parents and based in New York, he first built his career as an actor, working across Broadway, film, and television after graduating from Yale. His time as a director and dramaturg, along with years spent in the downtown theater scene, shaped a way of thinking about performance that prioritizes exchange over presentation.

Several members of Young Allies share that lineage, particularly through their connection to the experimental theater company Elevator Repair Service. Through workshops and master classes taught across the country and internationally, that community has developed a collaborative approach that sometimes begins without a script, using elements like the people in the room, sound, architecture, and source material as starting points. That openness carries directly into the band’s process, where songs are allowed to evolve through interaction rather than control.

The Long Island City residency has become the foundation for this next phase. Over the past several months, Young Allies has been building its identity there, returning regularly to test new material, stretch arrangements, and develop a shared language as a group. The performances function less as fixed presentations and more as ongoing conversations, where songs continue to change from night to night.

Young Allies x Live at LIC Bar

In a cultural moment shaped by speed, distance, and increasing abstraction, Young Allies is grounded in something more immediate: people in a room, making something together in real time.

The forthcoming EP continues that trajectory, with additional tracks including “Watchman,” inspired by a collection of French pastoral poems Michel discovered from around the year 1050, and “Are You In,” which draws from Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” carrying that same instinct to rework older material into something immediate.

Even the name reflects that sense of continuity. “Young Allies” was originally the title of a production company Michel used earlier in his career, now repurposed to reflect a shift from individual authorship toward collective creation.

What’s emerging is a band that values restraint as much as expression, atmosphere as much as melody, and collaboration as a central principle.

Young Allies is the result of that process – and the beginning of something still unfolding.