Photo: Leslie Ryan McKellar

Charleston, S.C.’s Shovels & Rope dive into their new single “Tickin’ Bomb” with a perfect western guitar strum and a stomping beat, setting a cinematic tone from the onset — and it sounds like guitarist Michael Trent had “stalker rom-com” film written all over this one. “This one was mostly written from the perspective of a crazed fan who’s fallen in love with a song,” Trent tells Hive. “[And] because they love the song so much, they’ve fallen in love with the author of the song.” The song is built on a vocal dynamic that has both Trent and bandmate Cary Ann Hearst singing every word, with a deliberate tension between the two voices. “The song definitely has tension,” Hearst says. “We wrote tension in there, but it’s definitely not reciprocated sexual tension.” In other words: It’s not them, it’s you.

Shovels & Rope’s new album, O’ Be Joyful, arrives July 31 on Dualtone Records.