Donni Heat Moves with Pull Me Back Into Phase II, Ten Months After Echoes From The Fallout
An Adelaide Alternative Artist Opens a New Era Built on Friends, Go-Karts and Choreography
Ten months after his debut EP, Donni Heat is moving again. Pull Me Back came out on 23 September 2026 and runs to three minutes and forty-four seconds. Its video page opens a new chapter in four words: Welcome to PHASE II.
Donni Heat is in the playlist below, with Pull Me Back in the running order. The single reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Listen to it there first, then read on.
Four Years of Singles Before Phase II
The catalogue is short and steady. Stay came first, in May 2022, followed by Out To LA that November. After a gap, Choker, with Kelsey Gale, arrived in January 2024. Then the pace climbed. Lies landed on 3 January 2025, Maybe in August and Cruel in October.
Later, those three became the spine of Echoes From The Fallout, the five-track EP released on 7 November 2025. Love In The Make Believe and Particles then completed it. So the EP counted as a debut while gathering a year of singles into one place. Counting it, Pull Me Back is the eighth release under his own name.
Meanwhile, the live run grew alongside it. Donni Heat has shared stages with Hot Chelle Rae, Sienna Skies and Hands Like Houses. In between, there were guest spots on other artists’ singles, from Play By My Rules in 2022 to Ctrl-Alt-Esc this September.
What Changed on Pull Me Back as Donni Heat Turned a Song About Friends Into a Go-Kart Video
The subject changed first. Pull Me Back is about the people who keep you grounded when you cannot find your way back to yourself. His bio describes songs drawn from heartbreak, growth and self-discovery. This one is about loyalty. The verses fill in why: time on the road, learning alone, missing home. Then the hook says it plainly, in a line that repeats the title: you pull me back, back, back again.
Also, the team is credited in full. Donni Heat wrote the song with Kieran Hunt. Alex Copp produced and mixed it, and Ste Kerry mastered it. The single carries Donni Heat’s own copyright line and goes out through the distributor G.Y.R.O.
Still, the video is the bigger move. Josh McCawley directed it for Lethal With A Lens, with choreography by Emily-Jo Davidson and seven dancers. It was filmed at Oz-E-Karts in Holden Hill and at SlingShot Studios, so the song’s laps of self-doubt play out on a real go-kart track. Kieran Hunt, Maro Odhigu, Ben Walker and Brad Rankin appear as the band.
In fact, that scale is new for this catalogue. A single with a styled, choreographed video and a named crew reads like the start of a planned new era, not a one-off. Hence the label on the page: Phase II.
The Through-Line From Stay to Pull Me Back and Where Donni Heat Sits in 2010s Alternative
The through-line is the era Donni Heat grew up on. His own description is the nostalgia of 2010s emo and rock, run through modern electronic production. The lyric sheet keeps that shape, with lines like Gladiators, yeah this is our empire built for a crowd to shout back.
Similarly, the comparisons follow from the stages. Hot Chelle Rae took Tonight Tonight into the Billboard Hot 100 top ten in 2011, the high point of that decade’s bright pop rock. Donni Heat has also played alongside them. Bring Me The Horizon mapped the other route out of the 2010s: That’s the Spirit, in 2015, moved the band from metalcore toward electronics and big hooks. Pull Me Back sits between those two points.
Outside reaction has been warm. A reviewer on triple j Unearthed called the single upbeat and fun, and heartfelt with it. The Hot and Heavy Show singled out the video’s colour scheme and production.
For listeners who came up on that decade’s alternative and still want new songs in its image, the run from Stay to Pull Me Back is worth following in order. Four years, one EP and now a second phase.
RockCharts.News’s curator team: “Play Cruel from the EP, then Pull Me Back. A year of singles sits on one side, a full crew and a choreographed video on the other, and that jump is what Phase II means.”
Stream Pull Me Back on Spotify or Apple Music. Follow Donni Heat on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube, and on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
About Author
