KISSING AT CARMELO’S

ALBUM STREAM HERE, MORE SECRETS BELOW XOXO

Lily Arminda has done the impossible: romanticized Bushwick dive bar and home of the heartbreakers, Carmelo’s. Inspired by nights downing $5 combos in the dim light of the bar, her debut album Kissing at Carmelo’s is an homage to the dates she’s fallen madly in love with and the ones she’s left at the pool tables. 

Produced by the ultimate indie band TOLEDO (Sophie Cates, Vern Matz, Bloomsday), this dream team first took Arminda into pop stardom with “When You’re Lonely” off her last EP DTR, released in 2021 on Urban Scandal Records (Renny Conti, Curls, The Band Ice Cream). “When You’re Lonely” earned the attention of multiple Spotify editorial playlists including Fresh Finds, Fresh Finds Indie, & Text Me Back, before taking major traction with Softly, where it stayed for a year amassing tens of thousands of streams. Over the years, Arminda has had the honor of opening for artists like Lucy Dacus, The National Parks, and Benjamin Francis Leftwich, and playing Bunbury Music Festival with headliners Post Malone, The Chainsmokers, and Blink-182.

She performed many of these songs for the first time at the year-long house show series she hosted out of her Bushwick apartment alongside friends like Charlie Kilgore (MICHELLE), cowboygirl, & Hudson Freeman, never getting a complaint from the neighbors. The first time she sang “Look at Me” everyone at the show caught on so quickly that they were singing along by the second half of the first chorus and haven’t gotten it out of their heads since. These days, Arminda hosts shows with her band at Brooklyn venues like Baby’s All Right, Rubulad, and Our Wicked Lady, where they rock out to her grungy Bushwick diss track “ur not on the list” and fan favorite “Bad Mood.” The after parties of every show take place in the upstairs booths of the bar down the street and taste like the bite of a lime after a tequila shot until washed down with Tecate.

It was obvious to Arminda to shoot the cover at its namesake but nothing else about the cover is predictable. She got 16 of her friends and their partners, Tinder matches, friends, and even exes to make out for it as she stared wide-eyed into the camera dressed in white (an homage to “Famous,” a song about eloping to Vegas with someone you met the night before). The cover was shot by Alec Ilstrup assisted by Logan Simons with Arminda’s direction. 

Now Arminda doesn’t wanna lead you on. Kissing at Carmelo’s can also lead to heartbreak. But after making out with so many of Bushwick’s finest sitting side by side in a booth and then never seeing them again, Lily Arminda questions, am I the heartbreaker? Sure, she’s been heartbroken but at the end of the day, who’s the real winner? The muse or the artist? The Bushwick baddie or the mediocre rock star? It’s always the Bushwick pop star. See for yourself on her full length record Kissing at Carmelo’s.

For more information please reach out to contact@lilyarminda.com