VIRUS VACCINE is the new single from Stephen Jaymes, the LA-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who’s already released two major tracks this summer. After the psychological noir “Chief Inspector” (a “folk punk opus that transcends boundaries” ~Divine Magazine) and the post-apocalyptic anthem ‘Tokyo’ (“the folk rock hit we needed!” ~Modern Mystery Music Blog), VIRUS VACCINE is a wry, would-be recovery ballad that finds humor in what Jaymes perceives as our collective failure at being able to tell what is good for us. “Whatever else the last few years have taught us, we’ve indisputably learned that we are actually terrible at understanding ourselves and how we work on the inside. As I worked on VIRUS VACCINE and discovered what it was about, the verses all emanated from the core story of a man who is accidentally curing himself to death, spiritually speaking. He believes his emotional reactions to a situation are symptoms of a mindset he can ‘get over’. So like the old exposure therapy sessions where patients would have to face their phobias of spiders or pillowcases in order to be cured, the singer stays in a bad situation in order to develop immunity. But you can’t become immune to yourself. You end up curing yourself to death. Often that’s tragic, but often it plays out as a comedy. The key to keeping the comic angle was realizing almost immediately that I was writing something in the tradition of Randy Newman or later Leonard Cohen. Usually I shy away when I hear an overt influence in something I’m writing. I correct away from it, or hide it more. But this time I leaned in and made it almost an homage. Then later, I realized I owe a huge debt to the Phil Ochs track ‘Pretty Smart on My Part’, a sendup of toxic masculinity way, way ahead of its time and still way, way relevant.”