With only 20 days left until my Pierce The Veil concert in Toronto — my first ever trip to the big city — the band decided to drop a heart-wrenching single that left me teary-eyed and with a knot in my throat. I guess I’m glad I held on till May.

“Kiss Me Now” feels like a gentle echo of Kissing in Cars, maybe even a trace of Hold On Till May. It brings back the smoother, more vulnerable side of the band that marked their Jaws of Life album. While songs like Emergency Contact from that same record also touch on softer emotions, their blend of pounding beats and soaring chords turns them into something almost like love anthems — songs you’d scream in a car with your friends, windows down, hair whipping in the wind.

But Kiss Me Now? It’s a night drive song. The kind you play alone when the city’s gone quiet, and you’re left with your thoughts.

Lyrically, it brushes against one of my favorite themes from Jaws of Life — the bittersweet, fleeting nature of connection. It’s a song about the ephemerality of moments. About savoring a memory before it fades, because it will.

Lines like “nothing lasts forever” and “moments fade away” hit a little too close for comfort. It reminds me of the constant, gnawing fear I carry — the one that keeps me from fully giving in to romantic relationships. The inevitability of endings. The sorrow that follows. The knowledge that no matter how beautiful something feels, it’s temporary. And god, don’t we all think about that more than we’d like to admit?

Then there’s the line: “you take away the misery of crashing doubt.” which I resonate with in a deeper level. Because isn’t that what we’re all chasing in our twenties? A moment, a person, a passion that can quiet the storm of uncertainty for even just a second? In a world moving too fast, where we constantly question if we’re making the right choices, falling behind, or even wasting time, those thoughts are recurring.

I feel it deeply as someone who left everything behind in another country in search of a dream. A new life. A better version of myself. And with every path I choose, there’s the crushing doubt about the ones I didn’t, about the moments I sacrificed and the people I left along the way.

Kiss Me Now is a golden addition to Jaws of Life — a tender, tragic reminder of how fragile everything is. It’s about embracing the now, knowing the future’s uncertain, and memories fade faster than we’re ready for.

Pierce The Veil keeps reinventing themselves and it makes them one of my favourite bands of all times. One minute, they’re hitting you with searing, heavy riffs that blow smoke through a hole in your chest, and the next, they’re softly holding your hand through your deepest thoughts. They give me a place to reflect on the things I often keep to my heart.

I am living that bittersweet pre-concert anxiety. I can’t wait to see Pierce The Veil live, but I don’t want it to pass (a feeling I first experienced with the one and only My Chemical Romance show in Seattle). And maybe ten years from now, I’ll be playing Kiss Me Now on a night drive, reminiscing about the blessing it was to experience this music — this beautiful, heartbreaking, life-affirming music — live, in flesh and color.