Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb is the third studio album by American rock band Tripping Daisy, released on July 7, 1998, through Island Records.

Produced by Eric Drew Feldman, the album is a stylistic departure from the band's previous work, showcasing a more artistic sound that is underpinned by pop sensibilities.

A few months prior to the release of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, Island Records' parent company was involved in a major corporate merger, which negatively affected the album's promotional campaign.

The album failed to meet sales expectations; neither it nor its singles charted, resulting in Island Records ending its contract with Tripping Daisy two months after its release.

Karnats was soon asked to join Tripping Daisy for a tour of Texas in mid-1997, and in June of that year, he was made an official member of the band, which became a quintet.

[3][10] Prior to the recording of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, Tripping Daisy sent a demo tape of their new material to producer Eric Drew Feldman.

[3][8][11] Curtis found the experience recording with Tripping Daisy to be "really positive" and "a relief" following UFOFU's acrimonious breakup that year, and on November 4, 1997, he was made a permanent member of the band.

[3][12] Tripping Daisy collectively wrote and recorded around 20 songs at Dreamland for Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, five of which were written at the studio.

[13]Feldman gave Tripping Daisy an unprecedented amount of creative freedom during the recording of Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb, and he encouraged the band to try out new ideas in the studio.

[13] Feldman insisted recordings that contained mistakes and missed notes were to be left intact, often responding to the band's requests to re-record takes with "No way.

Previously, during the recording of I Am an Elastic Firecracker, the company's A&R representatives pressured Tripping Daisy to produce more commercial-sounding material, likely in response to the poor performance of the label's 1993 re-release of the band's debut album Bill, which was expected to be an immediate success.

[14] The band was extremely proud of the album; bassist Mark Pirro called it "the best we've been so far" and DeLaughter said he had "finally made a record and been a part of something that [he'd] wanted to achieve for a long time".

[18][23] DeLaughter envisioned Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb as an artistic statement that challenged and rejected modern-day radio, which he saw as "formulated and predictable", and the pressures from Island the band had faced with I Am an Elastic Firecracker.

[24] He also considered Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb to be "the most honest record coming out in the last few years",[24] and felt the album's openly flawed nature gives it a quality of "truth".

[8] Island's then-CEO Davitt Sigerson described Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb as "more epic and more emotionally connecting" than Tripping Daisy's earlier works.

[3] FMQB described "Waited a Light Year" as "an adventurous pocket symphony" that "uses three distinctly different musical movements that culminate in a blinding wall of noise".

[17][26] Some of the album's tracks exhibit a punk rock influence;[17] "Mechanical Breakdown" was described as "neo-futuristic"[15] and pop-punk,[13] while "8 Ladies" features off-kilter, post-punk riffs in the vein of Shudder to Think.

2 & 3" is a combined cover of the songs "Indian Poker (Part 2)" and "Indian Poker (Part 3)" by the indie rock band Brainiac, from their album Hissing Prigs in Static Couture (1996); the track was dedicated to Brainiac's lead singer Timmy Taylor, who was killed in a car accident in May 1997, in Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb's liner notes.

"[3] Island Records hoped to promote Tripping Daisy and Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb with a "born-again marketing push" that was designed to help build the band's credibility and create a new fanbase; this would have included giving DeLaughter thousands of dollars to produce a film about the album.

[33][8] The decision to release "Waited a Light Year" as a single was seen as a risky move for the band due to its six-minute runtime—although a four-minute radio edit was also provided—and the fact there were more accessible songs on the album.

[3] DeLaughter stated the band decided to release the single as a rejection of mainstream radio and to dissuade listeners from perceiving Tripping Daisy as one-hit wonders due to "I Got a Girl".

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic hailed the album as "a big stylistic breakthrough [for Tripping Daisy]" and praised Feldman's contributions.

[16] Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork also applauded Tripping Daisy's growth: "Gone are the days of the saccharine, abrasive cuteness the band exploited on I Am An Elastic Firecracker and with it, any hope of being lumped alongside Deadeye Dick".

Jenny Eliscu of CMJ New Music Monthly said Tripping Daisy's experimentation on the album is akin to "a kid with its first chemistry kit", producing songs of varying quality; "sometimes it creates a fascinating new concoction; other times the different parts just neutralize each other and what's left is an inchoate mess".

[23] In an unfavorable review, Michael Bertin of The Austin Chronicle said the album had come three years too late to save the band's reputation, and that most of its songs lacked any staying power.

[57] The Dallas Observer called Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb "the greatest record of [Tripping Daisy]'s career" in July 2011,[58] and later ranked "Sonic Bloom" at number 100 on their "100 Best Texas Songs" list in August 2012, praising the track as "more heartfelt than anything [the band had] done before".

[59][60] In a 2024 interview with D Magazine, DeLaughter called Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb his favourite album from Tripping Daisy's discography, citing its enjoyable recording experience and the band's songwriting developments.

[61] Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb has been retrospectively viewed as a precursor to Tim DeLaughter's subsequent endeavors with the choral rock band The Polyphonic Spree, which he formed following Tripping Daisy's disbandment in 1999.