Toronto/Ottawa Duo Crashmore Share Wry, Aching Single "I Do the Most" From Debut EP 'Hung Up'

Toronto and Ottawa-based duo Crashmore release "I Do the Most," the bright and bittersweet single from their debut EP 'Hung Up'. Made by lifelong friends Devin Calow and Michael Sheppard, the song captures everything the band does best, wrapping aching, self aware lyrics inside an irresistible indie pop rock hook that pulls you in before you notice where it lands.

"I Do the Most" plays like a portrait of one-sided devotion in the social media age, the quiet ache of caring more than the other person ever will. "And I'm so tired of feeling alone, but I still smile when your name lights my phone," Calow sings, before delivering the line that gives the song its title and its sting, "still watch all your stories and like all your posts, baby you just sit there while I do the most." There is real wit in the writing too, a knowing humour that turns heartbreak into something you can dance to, as Calow admits with a wink, "I'm so sorry for being so damn funny, but now it's plain to see that this joke was on me."

That balance of levity and melancholy sits at the centre of who Crashmore are. "We make indie pop rock for an anxious generation," the band explains. "On the surface it's masking as a good time but dig a little deeper into the lyrics and you can see the anxiety and sadness." It is a sound built for an era of curated feeds and quiet loneliness, songs that smile on the outside while telling the truth underneath.

The friendship behind the music runs deep, and unusually Canadian in its origins. Calow and Sheppard met as eight-year-olds at the Whitby Curling Club, bonding over the sport before they ever picked up instruments. They reunited in the music room at Henry Street High School and have been making music together ever since, two kids from Whitby who grew up playing together and became adults doing the very same thing.

'Hung Up' traces its roots to a singular moment in time. Calow began writing the EP the very day the world shut down in 2020, alone in his parents' backyard shed with only his guitar, channelling fresh heartache into five happy sounding sad songs. Once he sensed the ideas were worth chasing, he brought them to Sheppard to build out. "I bring the lyrics and the melodies and Shep's wonderful musical mind does the rest," Calow says. On the recordings, Sheppard plays every instrument except the trumpet, a one-man band giving these bedroom sketches their full-bodied life.

For Calow, performing the songs is its own kind of time travel. "I turn into someone else when I'm singing these songs," he says. "They are like a time capsule, a snapshot of my feelings and heart forever having their strings pulled." That sense of preserved feeling runs across the whole EP, from the restless reinvention of "Toronto" to the raw undertow of "Deep Down Inside," each track pairing a buoyant surface with a deeper current of doubt and longing.

With "I Do the Most," Crashmore introduce themselves as sharp, funny and emotionally honest songwriters, the kind who understand that the catchiest melodies often carry the heaviest hearts.