This British alt-rock band’s new single is a Subaru WRX love song

Having a dream car that you fantasize about during boring meetings or gridlocked commutes is an essential part of being a car guy. Of course, part of that is creating a narrative around owning that car: if only you had that car, you’d finally be happy. Right? Definitely. British alt-rock band Sports Team gets it. “I’m in Love (Subaru),” their first single from their upcoming album 2025 Boys of today, is about idealizing cars as a ticket to a better life.

“In the Subaru Impreza, I’m the king of the road,” lead singer Alex Rice sings over upbeat, disco-inspired instrumentals. The accompanying music video finds Rice and bandmates performing their song in the glorious light of the title car’s headlights, while leaning over its signature hood scoop, sitting on top of it, and using its rear spoiler as a keyboard stand. We’d much rather drive the car ourselves, but to each his own.

Since their inception as a college band at Cambridge University, Sports Team have bucked the traditional path for British alt-rock bands, defining themselves against the flowery poetry and atmospheric lyrics of fellow indie bands like The Strokes, HMLTD, and Shame. Unafraid to lean into their middle-class British roots, they center their songs around idiosyncratic, everyday symbols. “(Subaru)” isn’t even their first car-centric song; their track “M5,” named after the English motorway, features lyrics like “What a cheek/Undertaking anyone at 70” and “Sunlight/splashes off the bonnet on the M5/It’s a wide open highway.”

“It doesn’t have to be a withered rose to have a big meaning – it could be a Motorola,” the band’s songwriter Rob Knaggs told the Guardian in 2019. “That could be your memento mori, that incredible poetic image.”

Now the poetic image is the glorious Subaru Impreza WRX, the rally legend as capable of anchoring this idealistic love song as it is of winning three World Rally Championship constructors’ titles and three World Rally Championship drivers’ championships. The dreamy retro aesthetic of the video and instrumentals, combined with Rice’s wistful, occasionally tongue-in-cheek delivery of the lyrics, bring childhood fantasy into the messy realities of life, like a glossy poster pasted over hairline cracks in the wall. The image is further romanticized in the song’s cover, an original painting of a rally-ready Impreza by Knaggs.

Michael Kuiper//Getty Images

Scottish rally driver Colin McRae sits on the bonnet of his Subaru Impreza, in which he won the 1995 world rally championship title.

“A Subaru Impreza WRX wasn’t just a car. It was a cheat code to a bright new future of boot-cut jeans and possibility,” the band wrote in a newsletter announcing the track’s release on Thursday. They say their love for the car stemmed from their childhoods playing Colin McRae Rally, the video game named after the Scottish rally legend who won the 1995 WRC drivers’ championship in — what else? — a Subaru Impreza. With that heritage (Subaru pun not intended), it’s easy to see how Sports Team developed stars (Subaru pun not intended) in their eyes for the car.

“’I’m in Love (Subaru),’ the song, is about that feeling,” the band wrote. “Knowing that everything that’s wrong in your life could be easily fixed if you would just manifest that apple-red, 2.4-liter, horizontally opposed, four-cylinder, turbocharged intercooled gasoline Subaru WRX.”

Now that’s a love song we can totally dance to.

Amelia Nonemacher’s interest in cars began during road trips through the American Southwest in her trusty Toyota Sienna minivan and fully blossomed when she discovered she could brag to her college friends about her manual-shift driving skills without a driver’s license. Born and raised in Austin, she spends her time at home in a 2013 Subaru BRZ.