May 28—Fresh off of their debut album, "Four Directions to Nowhere," Laketown Riots are pleased to announce their new single "Tyke."

"This project started out as a simple exercise in folk/acoustic music but it's slowly evolving and getting some traction and I think that this next single is going to Albuquerque's community," Dmitri Glover said in a press release.

Laketown Riots was created by Glover, an Albuquerque singer/songwriter. After releasing a number of self-produced albums of various genres, in 2020 Glover decided to focus solely on indie folk.

The single is a gut-wrenching story of Tyke the Circus Elephant.

"I originally wanted to do something childish, almost a parody of a kid's song since circuses and elephants have always been presented as something innocent and wholesome," Glover said. "This song is about the loss of that innocence."

Glover came up with idea while surfing the web.

"I was on YouTube, late at night and I saw this archival footage of an elephant called Tyke in 1994 of her going on a rampage during that performance," Glover said. "I couldn't get it out of my head, so I was writing this song about it and everybody that played it said that it was really good so I decided to put it out as my latest single."

Going down the YouTube rabbit hole helped get the gears turning for Glover.

"I have always been a big animal lover and have always been on the fence about things like making wild animals do tricks for us," Glover said. "I kind of always knew it wasn't a good idea, but I think I needed to see that just to show that, you know, prove to me that was a bad thing."

Though it seems we have slowly moved away from caging animals, the practice still exists.

"I think carting them around in unique conditions and forcing them to do tricks is traumatic for their well-being," Glover said.

To Glover, this issue is about more than animal rights.

"A lot of my fans, in their emails and DM's, keep seeing this as a metaphor for something bigger," he said in the press release. "One fan commented 'We need more Tykes, like we need less trainers' I love that. I think a lot of people are tired of feeling pushed around, neglected, oppressed. I think they really sympathize with Tyke because she symbolizes our desire to be free."

Glover hopes to bring new and relevant music to the community with a collection of songs ranging from passionate to humorous to avante garde, and every other emotion. Singles from this album include "Carnival Show!," "Fairy Tale" and "Little Tin Man," with the latter two receiving radio airplay on KUNM Freeform.

"I would say in the local music scene there's not as much camaraderie as there could be," Glover said. "There's definitely a lot of talent. I wish that we could get people to kind of work together and support each other more as it kind of seems like everybody tries to sing over each other, if that makes any sense."

"Tyke" will be available to download on Bandcamp on June 3, and available to stream on all major digital streaming platforms.