half•alive is a California-based musical trio that formed in 2016, composed of Josh Taylor, J Tyler Johnson and Brett Kramer.

After parting with his old band, The Moderates, Taylor began writing songs for their first EP, 3, which was released on May 3rd, 2017. The album garnered millions of streams online, and the band quickly amassed a significant audience.

Their single “still feel.” was released August 3rd, 2018. The music video, whose choreography and cinematography gained media attention, led to the band signing a record deal with RCA Records. The following year, online streams skyrocketed, and the track landed on Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart. It has since accumulated over 80 million streams on YouTube and Spotify alone.

In 2019, half•alive was selected as one of Youtube’s Artists on the Rise. That year brought the release of their debut album Now, Now Yet and a worldwide tour, including shows in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

In 2022, after releasing a series of singles the previous year, the band released Give Me Your Shoulders, Pt. 1, which was supposed to serve as the first part of their second studio album.

However, six months later on September 12, the band announced the cancellation of Pt. 2 via the single “Night Swims (poem)”, a spoken word track. The accompanying music video was captioned:

the end of an era & the beginning of another. we didn’t need Part 2, we needed something beyond it..

On October 13, the album’s name was revealed as Conditions of a Punk. Its release date was revealed through a new single released titled “Did I Make You Up?”. The tracklist was revealed a week later, which included all of the tracks from Give Me Your Shoulders, Pt. 1, retroactively categorizing it as a preluding EP.