Today Nashville’s punk rock band Be Your Own Pet have  released their new single, “Hand Grenade.” The song marks band’s first new music since the release of their 2008 Get Damaged EP (XL Recordings), which was was written and recorded by the band‘s founding members Jemina Pearl Abegg , Jonas Stein, Nathan Vasquez, and John Eatherly.

Picking up right where Be Your Own Pet left off and clocking in at just over three minutes, “Hand Grenade” is an exuberant return which proves Be Your Own Pet are the same band that Pitchfork has called “vibrantly charismatic” and Rolling Stone labeled “charmingly raw.”

In the press release Abegg explains what“Hand Grenade” means to her.

“‘Hand Grenade’ started out as a threat to the people who harmed me, that I will make them suffer as I have suffered. But the song grew like a mirror to my own grief process, through anger, denial, sorrow. In the end I gain my power back not through violence, but through self acceptance and rejection of the labels others might put on me. I define myself, no one else.”

Be Your Own Pet are scheduled to perform at this year’s Shaky Knees Festival on May 5 in Atlanta, GA. Then in the following month the band will head to the UK and Europe for a string of performances including Primavera Sound.

Back in 2005 Be Your Own Pet played their first SXSW and  their debut single “Damn Damn Leash” quickly led to a record deal with Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace label in the U.S. and XL Recordings in the UK.  From there the band went on to release their self-titled debut album and the album Get Awkward.