Cult of Youth has come a long way from being a bedroom project, but that hasn’t stopped Sean Ragon, the driving force and sole permanent member of the band, from sleeping where he works. Cult of Youth's latest, Love Will Prevail, was recorded in the studio Ragon built himself behind his record store in Bushwick, Brooklyn -- and getting the album finished required more than just building out the room and wiring the boards. “When it came time to mix it, I was so far behind schedule that I just locked myself in and didn’t leave until it was finished,” Ragon, sitting at a tidy desk in the studio on a sweltering August day, says. “I had a blow-up mattress on the floor and I was sick with the flu and I just sat in here and worked until the sun came up, then drank a bottle of NyQuil and slept on the floor until someone came in to open the store and brought me some coffee. I didn’t leave until the record was done.”

The solitary confinement was worthwhile. Love Will Prevail, Cult of Youth’s third record, is a confident charmer that shows off Ragon’s singing, songwriting and instrumental ability with help from Glenn Maryansky on drums, Christiana Key on violin, as well as backup vocals from Battletorn’s Beverly Hames. Songs like "A New Way" and "To Lay With The Wolves" turn swirling, Renaissance Fair-appropriate folk on its head with growling voices and a dark intensity not normally found adjacent to bouts of jousting.Though Ragon says that less than half of the tracks he wrote actually ended up on the album, the ten tracks that made the cut are tight, edgy and folk-tinged with one eye on the romantic. It’s a mix that Ragon -- who cut his teeth playing in punk bands and calls his music “post industrial” -- never thought would catch on. “It started out as a very personal home recording project, I’d been recording for about 10 years in my bedroom before this project came to fruition,” he says. “I wanted to participate in a lot of the bands I really admired as a teenager, like Psychic TV or Coil or Current 93 or Death in June.”

Now that Ragon’s released three records; played solo, formed bands, disbanded them and formed them again; seen crowds walk out of rooms and found himself opening for the likes of Zola Jesus, he’s found that his music does indeed have an audience. “I’m stoked; I never expected anybody to care at all,” he says. “If this record is the peak and things plateau after this, I’m happy. I’ve done more than I expected to do. I’m the luckiest guy in the world: I have my own record store and studio, I get to tour for three months. Who cares what happens next, I’ve already got it.”