Exam Season take the rough with the smooth with new track "Everything Is Salted Caramel"

When S Club 7 sang "you gotta take the good with the bad, the happy with the sad, but don't get mad if things don't go the way you planned," there was an honest conviction to their words. Mixing the sweet with the salty to turn it into something delicious, Exam Season's latest offering brings new flavour to the age old sentiment that the rough and the smooth go hand in hand.

With sun-soaked guitar chimes and buoyant rhythms, "Everything Is Salted Caramel" traces its way through doubt and worry with an optimism so ardent it almost literally shines. Melding day-to-day dreariness and apprehension with a scorching energy, the track is glimpse of light in these darkening winter nights.

"A few years back you’d be hard pressed to find salted caramel flavoured paraphernalia anywhere. Now, you’ll get it in Costa, cake shops, even Toilet Duck! Complete madness," frontman Ed Watson details ("haven’t checked tbh but they probably do," he clarifies on the Toilet Duck front). "But, the irresistible combination of bitter salt and sugary sweetness makes for a mouthwateringly-great taste experience, and sometimes you can’t get enough of it."

"It’s important to have this combo not just in food and drink, but also in relationships and life in general," he expands. "There are undoubtedly moments in all relationships (especially long distance ones) where you will love your partner with all your heart, but equal moments where you hate them more than woke teens who watch cool new show Black Mirror hate technology/the establishment/etc. It’s important to know this is healthy. At least, more healthy than literal salted caramel."

Exam Season support Dream Wife and Girl Ray at Kamio in London tomorrow (15 December).