Soul Coughing's Mike Doughty returns with new project Ghost Vroom, shares new single 'Rona Pallona' | NME

Mike Doughty, the frontman of defunct alternative hip-hop group Soul Coughing, has launched a new project with Angus Livingstone called Ghost Vroom. The duo have shared their first single, entitled ‘Rona Pallona’, a dreamlike rap through the COVID-19 era.

The song arrives with a lyric video, in which Doughty’s multifarious stream-of-consciousness references are converted into a doom-scrolling Instagram feed. Watch it below.

‘Rona Pallona’ is taken from a forthcoming three-track EP, ‘Ghost of Vroom 2’, out September 25 via Mod y Vi Records. Beastie Boys engineer Mario Caldato, Jr helped produce the record. Doughty described working with Caldato as “incredible”.

“I was quaking in my shoes working with that guy, because I’m such a fan. He’s incredible at this sound we were making — the best in the business,” he said in a statement.

The new project was initially meant to be a reunion of Soul Coughing, who broke up in 2000, with the new name referencing a planned companion piece to their 1994 album, ‘Ruby Vroom’.

Doughty told Stereogum that he had begun writing music explicitly for the old band.

“I called up Soul Coughing and said, ‘Do you want to do this?” I got back a hot plate of crazy. I was like, ‘Well, thanks, guys’,” he said.

“The band relationship is just so loopy. I’ve talked to people in the loopiest bands, and they’re always like, “Wow, you guys were really fucked up, weren’t you?”

Doughty released his last solo album, ‘The Heart Watches While The Brain Burns’, in 2016.