After welcoming us to the team with their acclaimed 2024 debut Service Merchandise, Open Mike Eagle, Video Dave, and STILL RIFT—the trio collectively known as Previous Industries—are back with Evergreen Plaza, five all-new songs that will make their live debut at this month’s Treefort Music Festival. The digital-exclusive EP is available now, wherever you stream or download music.

Evergreen Plaza continues its exploration of themes established on Service Merchandise—bankrupt stores, dead malls, personal and cultural memories from an analog era surviving into the digital age—three long-time friends from Chicago making something new from their shared past. With tracks produced by Wino Willy and a returning Child Actor, there’s a woozier “Previous Industries After Dark” feel to Evergreen Plaza, an easy charm made irresistible by the band’s flow.

Previous Industries, on Evergreen Plaza:

Evergreen Plaza was a shopping mall in Chicago. The Evergreen Plaza operated from 1952 to 2013. It featured over 120 stores, as well as a food court. The mall closed in 2013 and became an outdoor shopping center.

Evergreen Plaza was a go-to destination for working- and middle-class black shoppers in the ’80s and ’90s, reflecting the reality of white flight in the suburbs of Evergreen Park and Beverly.

As the title of the EP, Evergreen Plaza is meant to ask what it means when places and ideas that are meant to be permanent are erased. Evergreen content is meant to be timeless, so what does it mean to have a timeless place demolished? The evergreen tree is known for its durability and vitality through the most brutal conditions. Does poor sales performance kill what nature cannot?

Yet in the project’s cover image, weeds have overtaken the surfaces inside a shuttered indoor mall. Somehow the plaza remains evergreen after all.

These songs were produced by Wino Willy (with Agent X on “Andriana Furs”) and Child Actor. Previous Industries is joined by Pep Love of the legendary Hieroglyphics Crew on “West Coast Video.”

Previous Industries on tour:
Mar 28 Boise, ID – Treefort Music Fest