A homecoming for The Ransom Collective

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OPM BAND The Ransom Collective has dropped a new track, “Tongue Tied,” which is their first official single in four years. To mark its release, the band held a virtual press conference where they detailed the song’s evolution — from being first written in 2020 to its completion across multiple cities and studios.

The song infuses bossa nova with indie pop and aims to be “a snapshot of who they were and a reminder of what still connects them.” The Ransom Collective was formed in 2013 and went on to define indie pop OPM in the 2010s.

For band members Kian Ransom, Jermaine Choa Peck, Muriel Gonzales, and Lily Gonzales, the song was a product of jamming together and an encapsulation of the butterflies of forming a new love.

“We weren’t sure where the song was gonna go. It was kind of a bossa nova style, but we found a way to pull it into our indie folk sound,” said Mr. Ransom, the band’s lead guitarist and vocalist. “I hope it will bring people back to some memory. The song plays out like a story, of people following a spark of curiosity, intrigue, or romance.”

He added that “Tongue Tied” was shelved for a long time when the band slowed down, with some members turning to other priorities and others moving out of town during the pandemic. This makes the song feel “less like a comeback, but more like coming home.”

For percussionist and vocalist Ms. Choa Peck, it was natural for the band members to pick production back up remotely, record their parts in different studios and spaces, and finally finish the track in Manila in late 2025.

“As a band, we allowed ourselves to experience life outside of the fulltime music that we were doing for how many years. Some of us got married, some of us moved to another country, some of us pursued solo careers. We were supportive of each other’s growth in life,” she explained. “The beauty of releasing this is that it’s like going back to those times, and seeing how we are now in this part of our lives after everything we’ve been through.”

Built on rich instrumentation, “Tongue Tied” introduces new textures and approaches into the band’s signature indie-folk palette, from jazzy harmonies to bossa nova rhythms.

The older Ms. Gonzales, violinist Muriel, noted that they’re no longer too strategic about what they put out. “We’re just going with the flow, whatever comes. If the younger generation picks it up, that’s cool, but in terms of genres, there’s so many different trends now. Our sound is very acoustic and organic, and we enjoy making the music that we like. It comes spontaneously when we write,” she said.

The band detailed that the song could resonate with both long-time fans and new listeners as it balances their familiar sound with a contemporary edge. It can be described as “an unreleased track of the Traces album, but jazzier, so it also feels like a standalone” — an unintentional result that emerged from their easygoing songwriting approach.

“I think our mindset has evolved in terms of having to be productive all the time,” the younger Ms. Gonzales, keyboardist Lily, added, on how their creative process as a band has changed. “It’s not really about productivity.”

On “Tongue Tied,” both she and Ms. Choa Peck were able to unleash their creativity with the percussion and voicing of the outro (the closing section of a song, the opposite of an intro). Mr. Ransom revealed: “The song changed so much because of the amount of time it took [to write]. We ended up swapping out the outro multiple times.”

“The outro was Lily just interacting with the music we already started together,” he said, concluding that “there’s something that just happens when we are all together.”

While they are under no pressure to churn out more music as a band, it is something they are all looking forward to doing naturally, they said.

The Ransom Collective’s “Tongue Tied” is out now on all digital music platforms worldwide. — Brontë H. Lacsamana