Zoey Tess isn’t here to play nice. On “Knocking at Your Front Door,” the Connecticut-born singer-songwriter turns the volume up on America’s conscience, delivering one of the most unflinching protest songs in recent memory. The track, a fiery lead single from her forthcoming debut There’s Gonna Be a Reckoning, recalls the righteous rage of the late ’60s — but it’s fueled by the 21st century’s brand of chaos, hypocrisy, and decay.
Tess opens with a haunting vision — “I had a dream the world was burning / No one cared, the earth kept turning” — before tearing into the establishment with a poet’s pen and a revolutionary’s heart. Her voice, both weary and defiant, rings somewhere between Joni Mitchell’s crystalline introspection and Patti Smith’s sneering fury. The result feels urgent, almost biblical, like a sermon shouted through a megaphone at the gates of power.
Musically, “Knocking at Your Front Door” is a storm in sepia tones: Hammond organ hums, a gritty bassline rumbles, and acoustic and electric guitars (courtesy of Teddy Kumpel) trade licks like warning shots. The rhythm section, with Reed Sutherland on bass and Nate Mondschein on drums, drives the song forward with a determined pulse — steady as a march, dangerous as a riot. Producer Spencer Hattendorf and Grammy-winning mixer Mario J. McNulty craft a cinematic wall of sound that honors the folk-rock lineage while keeping it fresh and alive.
The track’s chorus is pure rallying cry — “You say you want war? / Well, we’re knocking at your front door” — a line that lands like a Molotov cocktail tossed through polite society’s living room window. Tess dismantles the twin idols of nationalism and religious piety, spitting lines like “You’ve sewn division, sold religion / Traded slavery for prison systems.” It’s not subtle — and that’s precisely the point.
In a musical landscape dominated by algorithmic escapism, Tess’s willingness to confront corruption and moral rot head-on feels almost radical. There’s blood and conviction in every note. With “Knocking at Your Front Door,” she joins a lineage of truth-tellers — Dylan, Baez, Ochs — not as a disciple, but as an heir apparent with her own fire to stoke.
If this single is any indication, There’s Gonna Be a Reckoning won’t just be an album title — it’ll be a promise. And maybe, a warning.
https://zoeytess.com
