Did Friko Find Something Worth Waiting For?
On their excellent new album Something Worth Waiting For, Chicago indie rock band Friko takes us on a dreamlike journey through growing up, feeling lost, escaping, and waiting.
Chicago indie rock band Friko released their second album, Something Worth Waiting For, in April 2026. Produced by Grammy-winning producer John Congleton, the album brings together elements of noise, progressive rock, folk, and classical music, creating an explosive, intense, and even cinematic sound.
Friko consists of lead vocalist and guitarist Niko Kapetan, drummer Bailey Minzenberger, guitarist Korgan Robb, and bassist David Fuller. Like many teenagers drawn to music, Kapetan and former member Luke began making music together in the high school band “Morinda” in Evanston. After that band’s dissolution, they went on to form Friko with Minzenberger on drums.
Friko’s own path offers a glimpse into the way many small bands begin and gradually grow: cold-emailing venues to land their first shows, mixing their EP late at night at Rax Trax to save on studio costs, and slowly moving from DIY shows to larger stages. They kept at it for three years, until they eventually signed with ATO Records. This slow, organic growth is part of what gives Friko’s sound its authentic, scene-rooted character, rather than the artificial polish of something overly refined.
After releasing their acclaimed 2024 debut album, Where we’ve been, Where we go from here, Friko began touring across North America, the U.K., Europe, and Asia. Their shows in Japan, from Fuji Rock Festival to a sold-out night at the 1,000-capacity Kanda Square Hall, marked a major step in their growing international reach. Since expanding from Kapetan and Minzenberger’s original duo into a four-member lineup, Friko’s music has become fuller and more expansive. It is hard to imagine that, back in high school, they could have foreseen how quickly Friko would grow in just a few years.
Their second album Something Worth Waiting For continues the sense of confusion and vulnerability found in their debut. But compared to the first album’s more inward, immersive sadness, this one carries a stronger sense of movement, a feeling of going forward. Vehicles are almost the central images of the album: trains, buses, hot air balloons, and bicycles. They keep amplifying the feeling of being “on the road.” This is not a journey with a clear destination, but something more restless and unfinished.
My favorite part of this album is its lyrics. Kapetan rarely relies on grand words to create depth. Instead, he uses small, specific details to build images, making everyday life suddenly open up into a much larger sense of confusion.
I wish I took the train today,
Yes, I wish I took it almost every day
I’d take it far away
And go like, “Choo-choo,” (choo-choo)
…
Chili dog, Philly steak, feelin’ it in my gut
‘Cause Pepto, it don’t do it strong enough
In “Choo Choo,” the childlike train sounds and junk food make the urge to escape feel strange, cute, and almost cartoonish, turning restlessness into something unexpectedly playful.
“Alice” and “Certainty” are the two dreamiest songs on the album. Both revolve around the idea of a world behind a door, drawing from Alice in Wonderland-like imagery and giving the music a strange, storybook-like sense of wonder: “Don’t stare into the keyhole/Alice did ya know/That rabbit is a pawn/And we are only pieces to move.” The lyrics of “Certainty” feel almost like a beautiful poem:
Back on the bus, take it up to the lake
Hot on the tracks now just miles away
And you slip on the ice, send your face to the ground
God, wasn’t it winter three months ago now?
In the sand there’s a castle with magical things
Cattails and dust bunnies
Apples and rings
From concrete real urban spaces like the Red Line, the bus, and the lake, the song slowly shifts into sandcastles, clouds, and doors. While listening, I felt as if the music and lyrics were pulling me into a strange, surreal dream.
You notice the crack in the cloud to your right
So you tap on it once and tap on it twice
It opens up slowly and boldly you cry
“Well, I'm certain there’s something, I'm certain there's more”
It never actually tells us what is behind the door. The song simply stops at the moment of seeing and believing. I couldn’t help including so many lyrics. They are just too beautiful.
Beyond the lyrics, the album also pays close attention to Niko’s voice, bringing out its roughness, warmth, and texture. In “Guess,” you can hear the tremble in his voice, the strain, the amplified breaths, and the short, broken endings of phrases. The emotion spills out right at the edge of cracking. Friko’s music preserves a lo-fi graininess, and because of that roughness, the album sounds especially real and sincere.
Listening to their music also reminds me of Radiohead, especially on “Still Around.” Niko once replied on Reddit that Radiohead is one of the band’s biggest influences. I think that is also why “Still Around” gives me a similar feeling of low, drifting melancholy.
The title track, “Something Worth Waiting For,” is my favorite song on the album.
And someday we’ll lay statues on this
Dirt beneath our feet
We’ll be running circles round them
Just you wait and see
It echoes the lyric from “Statues” on the first album: “Someday, we’ll lay statues of our own.” The song begins with a distant, sorrowful murmur, then gradually opens up as the emotion slowly builds. The harmonies are especially moving. Voices overlap and alternate layer by layer, rising together with a wall of explosive noise until the song becomes something grand, spectacular, and almost collective.
Finally, the album closes with “Dear Bicycle.” After trains, buses, hot air balloons, and boats, it returns to the smallest, most private, and perhaps most fragile vehicle: a bicycle.
I’ve been there, I know you’re scared
The ice is fucking everywhere
You’ll slip and slide and writhe around
But hear me now
I was empty then, I'm not empty now
…
So stick around
As an ending, the song simply and gently pushes that bicycle out the door. When Niko sings, “I’ve been there, I know you’re scared,” it feels as if he is comforting his past self, with a quiet but powerful tenderness.
The only thing that holds the album back for me is that it feels a little too “full.” The instrumental arrangements are rich and full of detail, with many passages building toward an almost symphonic sense of grandeur. That density and emotional intensity are part of the album’s power, but they also leave relatively little room to breathe. Some sections feel stretched out, and when listening to the album from beginning to end, it can become a bit exhausting.
Returning to the album title: the first album was called Where we’ve been, Where we go from here, as if asking, “Where did we come from, and where do we go next?” The second album, Something Worth Waiting For, feels like a response to that question. It reminds me of childhood school field trips, when the most exciting part was never the destination itself, but the bus ride there: the anticipation, the motion, and the feeling of being on the way. That “something” remains vague, like a meaning we keep reaching for, even before we fully understand what it is.
edited by Josephine Milea.
album artwork believed to belong to either the publisher of the work or the artist.
