The Dream Eaters Turn Grief into Dark Humor on “Dead Friends”

Brooklyn, NY/Toronto, ON-based indie rock/pop duo The Dream Eaters return with their delightfully macabre and oddly uplifting new single, “Dead Friends.” At once darkly funny and deeply moving, the song transforms loneliness and grief into a surreal celebration — the kind that takes place around a dinner table set for the living and the dead alike.

“It’s about taking a trip to your hometown, and the loneliness of realizing that what you knew as your life there has disappeared,” explains Jake Zavracky (vocals/guitar/programming). “So you go back to your apartment and have dinner with their ghosts. It’s humorous and surreal but also about celebrating the moments we shared with the people who have left us.”

That mix of the absurd and the sincere defines “Dead Friends.” Built around bright melodies and shimmering instrumentation, the song juxtaposes its dark subject matter with buoyant indie-pop textures. It’s the kind of tonal sleight of hand The Dream Eaters have long mastered — finding levity in the heavy, and warmth in the weird.

What makes “Dead Friends” so distinctive, though, is its embrace of the ordinary as sacred. “I don’t know that anyone has ever written a song about making dinner for ghosts,” Zavracky adds. “It’s also about food, and how we use food to show love. Making dinner for people is the best way to show love for your friends.”

That sentiment — that love and grief are two sides of the same meal — gives “Dead Friends” its haunting emotional core. It’s macabre, yes, but it’s also full of grace. Even as the song dances around the theme of mortality, it lands squarely on something universal: the desire to nurture, to remember, to keep our lost connections alive in whatever way we can.

Mixed by Zavracky’s longtime friend John Dragonetti (of The Submarines and Jack Drag), the song carries an added layer of nostalgia. The collaboration feels like another thread in the web of memory and meaning the song explores — a reconnection between old friends in the act of creation. Its inspiration, too, comes from an unlikely but moving source: Italian chef Gennaro Cantaldo, who once cooked a simple lemon pasta for his late friend in a viral video that left Zavracky deeply affected. “I saw it and immediately wrote ‘Dead Friends,’” he recalls. “It was such a pure way to show love and grief — through food, through doing.”

Since their formation in 2015, The Dream Eaters — made up of Zavracky and Elizabeth LeBaron (vocals/keys), along with drummer/dancer Steve Fugitt — have carved a singular space for themselves within the indie world. Originally meeting while bartending in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood, the duo began as a dream-pop project before evolving into something much stranger, more cinematic, and more self-aware.

Their music has always flirted with the gothic and the surreal, but what sets them apart is how they pair those aesthetics with emotional candor. Over the years, they’ve expanded their creative universe through a steady stream of releases: two albums (We Are A Curse in 2017 and Pagan Love in 2018), a string of EPs, and an ambitious multimedia project called The Dream Eating Freakshow — a video art series that blends music, satire, and performance.

Their cult following spans TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where fans gravitate toward the duo’s uncanny blend of humor, melancholy, and charm. Whether they’re performing onstage or creating short surreal films, The Dream Eaters thrive on collapsing the line between the profound and the ridiculous.

With “Dead Friends,” they’ve distilled that balance into one of their most memorable pieces yet — a track that somehow feels equally fit for a Halloween party and a quiet moment of reflection. It’s playful, poignant, and unmistakably human, offering a strange comfort in the idea that love — like good food — never really dies.

Because sometimes, the best way to remember the people you’ve lost is to set another place at the table, pour a glass of wine, and invite them to dinner — even if they can’t stay for dessert.