When a band reaches its fifth record, there is a peculiar weight in the air—a reminder of what’s already been spoken and the quiet question of what remains unsaid. For TOPS, Montréal’s masters of pop precision and melodic shimmer, Bury the Key is an album that does not flinch at that question. Instead, it takes it into the palm of its hand like a small flame, letting it burn a little hotter, a little darker, before deciding whether to cup it close or let it scorch.

Formed in the 2010s, when afternoons were still measured by bicycles rattling through Montréal neighborhoods and songs were written in sunlit jam spaces, TOPS have long been attuned to the delicate balance between sincerity and surface. Their music was soft in a way that felt subversive, gleaming without slipping into excess, honest without losing in the play of pop. But Bury the Key arrives with a sharpened edge. If their past work was painted in gauze, this one cuts through the fabric.

Jane Penny, who gives voice to TOPS with her breathy directness, laughs when she calls it “evil TOPS,” but the phrase lingers in the ear. It suggests the band’s willingness to step outside their usual frame, to see what happens when grooves are pushed harder, when the gleam of soft rock turns toward something more sinister. Penny describes nights in Montréal when snowstorms rattled the windows, pipes froze, and the band worked late into the kind of dark that feels alive. That weather seeps into the record. There is a pulse of danger beneath its disco sheen, a shadow trailing each chorus.

Desire is the raw material here—desire to love, to consume, to self-destruct, to transcend. Naturally, it’s never neat.  Desire can’t possibly be, yet it falls at the crux of everything. The songs circle hedonism, toxicity, self-destruction, the addictive repetition of pleasure that always edges into pain—not as abstractions but as lived tensions, sharpened by years on the road where every night spins you into new company, new urges, new pitfalls. Penny admits these lyrics are closer to her own skin than she is often comfortable revealing. The record begs the question: what does it mean to be drawn to what can undo us? And more importantly, what do we do when the undoing is half the pleasure?

“Annihaliation,” built from drummer Riley Fleck’s fevered hi-hat pattern, spirals into homage for the artists we’ve lost—Sinéad O’Connor, Ryuichi Sakamoto, voices whose departure leaves cultural silence in their wake. Elsewhere Marta Cikojevic steps more fully into the songwriting, her harmonies with Penny widening the emotional aperture of the band. Guitarist David Carriere’s tonal play—part soft gloss, part jagged hook—threads it all together. The four of them, stable now after years of shifting lineups, move as one body with one nervous system: attuned, restless, alive.

‍Bury the Key is not a concept album, but it arcs like one. Penny sketches its sequence like a descent: the spark of surrender, the realization of entrapment, the sacrifice, the wreckage, the reflection. The cover, an apocalyptic tableau, feels like a crime scene: what the fuck happened here? Desire is the crime and the culprit, love and violence folded into the same embrace. The songs don’t necessarily answer the question, but they’re unafraid of its weight.

And still, it all glimmers. For all its sinister undercurrents, the record carries dance-floor DNA. Basslines pull you forward, synths shimmer, choruses repeat like neon lights. It is this duality—polished yet claustrophobic, body-moving yet emotionally raw—that defines the listening experience. TOPS are not content to sit still in their own nostalgia; they press against it, testing what happens when the grooves buckle a little, when honesty punctures gloss.

What makes TOPS remarkable is not only their endurance but their chemistry. A decade in, their songs remain open-hearted without being naïve, crafted without being sterile. Bury The Key feels like a band coming into alignment, secure in who they are, bold enough to dare to chase something a little more dangerous. It is an album that understands the contradiction at the core of love and art alike—the things that fill us up are often the same things that threaten to undo us.

TOPS have never sounded more alive. And as Penny tells it, even if the record captures turmoil the band has moved past, its darkness gleams with the honesty of a time that was real, and that’s enough.

What follows is our conversation with Jane Penny, where she speaks about the birth of “evil TOPS,” the pull of toxic desire, and how a band can still surprise itself after five records.

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You’ve described this as a reintroduction — what exactly did you want to reintroduce, and to whom?

In the summer of 2023, everyone came to Montréal, and we rented this little jam space in Hochelaga, and we were working on the record for about like a month together. It had been a long time since we'd all been working on a record in Montréal, and it had this sort of funny nostalgic quality, and also a bit of a clean slate after everything that happened in the past few years, the pandemic and then all the touring. We started as a band like in the 2010s in Montreal, kind of just like biking around the city and jamming. It's kind of fun to come back to that kind of spirit for the record.

You jokingly referred to this album as “evil TOPS,” which made me laugh. What moments during the making of the album made you realize you were making an “evil TOPS” record?

I think we wanted to stretch the sound of what we were doing. Once you're on your fifth record, I feel like you kind of have to ask yourself, “why do you need to continue with this project?” I mean, there's so many reasons that you could continue. Maybe it's the musical connection and friendship that you have, which is definitely a part of it for us. “Annihilation” is a song that has a pretty different approach—it  just has this weird dark energy. We were working on it during a crazy snow storm in Montréal, we were up really late, and it was really, really cold, and my pipes froze. I didn't realize it actually until the next day. It felt like a lot of times we were working on the record, it would be really stormy outside, and it just felt this kind of like had this sinister quality to it.

As you mentioned, the album engages with hedonism, toxicity, and self-destruction all at once. Did your personal lives mirror these themes during writing, or was it more of an observation?

I think it is probably based a lot more on personal experience than I’m comfortable talking about usually—which is a funny thing—but also, I think it was just sort of observations that I made about urges and what we seek out. You know, I think women now are having to examine whether or not what we're drawn to and attracted to is necessarily what's going to be good for us, or what's leading us on our own path. And I feel like when you're on tour too, everything's heightened. You're going out every night, there's so much energy that you're getting from the crowd, and there's so many different interactions that you have. And I think it just kind of makes all of that even more concentrated in a way.

References to Sakamoto and O’Connor’s passing in “Annihilation” give the record a cultural mourning layer. Did that loss shift the album’s tone after it had already started taking shape?

I feel like it’s still something that’s continually happening. We’ve had so many cultural greats passing away—Ozzy Osbourne was a big one for me. It almost feels unlikely, but he’s such a huge inspiration. His early albums are some of the best examples of a band playing tightly together, and of course his voice is incredible. For me, it’s about this sense of a shared culture that’s fading. There are definitely aspects of the 20th century we should move on from, but the celebration of artists—having them so present in the conversation, being given a platform—that’s something I worry about losing, especially with the rise of AI. With this record, it was really important to us not to use AI at all. We wanted to only work with artists and support artists, because I believe they’re essential to society and need to be protected. At the same time, I don’t think there aren’t great people being born today. There’s so much creativity now, and I love seeing it. I think of someone like Chappel Roan—the aesthetics, the effort, the imagination she puts into her presentation. I’m so about it. So it’s really two sides of the coin: the culture I grew up worshipping is fading into the past, but new forms of greatness are still being created all the time.

Do you see Bury the Key as a narrative from start to finish, or more as a collection of distinct emotional snapshots?

It’s funny—tracklisting always feels so important, and so hard to finalize, but it’s never really been what shapes the record. I wouldn’t call Bury the Key a true concept album, but our records often skirt that territory. This one definitely has an arc. “Stars Come After You” is about the spark of something new, losing yourself in it. “Outstanding in the Rain” is the realization that you’re in a situation you might not want, and you resign yourself to it. “Falling on My Sword” is the moment of sacrifice, giving more of yourself even when it hurts. “Standing at the Edge of Fire” is about reaching a breaking point—you keep getting hit, you can’t weather the storm anymore, and it’s wreckage. And then “Paper House” closes it all in reflection, surveying what’s burned down around you. It sounds melodramatic, but that’s why the cover felt right—this apocalyptic scene that almost looks like a crime went down. You’re left asking: what the fuck happened?

There’s definitely an arc to the album, as well as this tension—there’s a danceable polish balanced by claustrophobic moments. Did you feel as though this push and pull was deliberate?

As a musician, you want the music to be groovy, effective, and infectious. As a songwriter, you want to be as honest as possible. For me, it’s always those two things working at once. And because we’re a band with years of playing together, that groove has naturally evolved. Hopefully, we’re capturing that energy no matter what the lyrics are saying.

You guys always seem to balance this vintage soft-rock texture with something more modern and fresh, but with this album you’ve also really pushed the envelope sonically. Is there a track on the record that feels like the biggest leap forward in your production and overall music-making?

There are a lot of little moments, honestly—I feel like it’s the record as a whole. I’m really proud of what we were able to do with the production. But if I had to pick one, I’d say “Annihilation”. It almost feels like us flexing a bit—there are so many fast drum fills and moments where we’re showing a side that isn’t necessarily in our nature. That’s why it stands out to me; there’s a sense of achievement in what we were able to create, especially in the way we combined organic instruments with added layers.

With Annihilation, that one was kind of built as a drum-first composition, right? It was really based around the drums. Had you guys ever taken that kind of approach before?

No, we’d never had Riley start a song with the drums. That was a really interesting shift for us. We basically started the track by sampling ourselves, which was a completely new approach.

Did that reveal something about your sound that you maybe hadn’t realized before?

Yeah, definitely. In general, we’re always trying to push the envelope in some way, and this showed us that we could take things in a slightly more intricate, almost fancier direction. I guess we’ll see where TOPS goes in the future, but it was cool to learn that about ourselves.

Were there any demos or ideas from earlier eras that resurfaced or evolved into songs on this record? Or was it more of a completely fresh slate?

Actually, there’s a song called Wheels at Night that was going to be on our 2022 EP. We took that instrumental and reworked it into a whole new song for this record, which was fun. But otherwise, most of the songs were demoed fresh—everything else was written specifically for the album.

Is there anything that feels truer about TOPS now than it did when the band first started—what, a decade ago at this point?

Definitely. Where we’re at now, I feel really inspired musically by who I’m working with. We’ve toured together so much, and I think that stability has become a huge part of what makes the band feel like TOPS today. In the past, we had a lot of lineup changes—especially with bass players. At a certain point, David was even writing a lot of the bass parts himself. But now, having this consistent four-member group feels really grounding. Marta’s been in the band for about eight years, and that longevity has solidified the group dynamic into what I think of as TOPS. Beyond that, the fact that David, Riley, and I are still excited to work together and keep choosing to return to the band after all these years—that feels really powerful.

And if this record is capturing an emotion or a feeling you’ve been going through in the present—something maybe you hadn’t expressed in the past decade of making records—what part of yourselves do you think it doesn’t capture?

There’s this funny thing about making a record: for me, it often feels like reflecting—either on my past or what I was going through at the time of writing. But records take a long time to come out. So it’s kind of surreal to be releasing this one, which really captures a moment of emotional turmoil, when right now I actually feel really happy. I’m in love, I feel good, and it’s such a contrast to the themes on the record. It’s a funny juxtaposition to have, but one that I’m happy about—I’m glad those darker themes feel so in the past. I’ll take that any day.

Yeah, there are a couple of songs I really love—Mean Streak especially. There’s this sound right before the bridge, or that instrumental section that comes in—I think that part is so cool. Kind of nerdy to point out, but it’s one of those details I’m really proud of.

Are there any other small details on the record—kind of like those little “bragging” moments you mentioned—that you really hope listeners notice and connect with?

One thing that excites me about this record is that we live in such a singles-driven world right now, but some of my favorite moments are actually on the non-singles. To me, it feels like a full album of strong songs—which might sound basic to say, but it’s true.