I’ve been swirling around a document for our September tour that I just can’t seem to finish. It occured to me today that I am likely stuck because we aren’t done touring for this year yet. There are fewer than a handful of events left, but wrapping those up will paint a clearer picture of what we are seeing and feeling out there right now.

One thing we all know is how much more costly everything is currently. The fact that anyone has a little extra to go out to a show or movie feels like a win, and it’s hard to fault anyone for staying at home, as that just might mean survival at this point. When the means are there, despite how hard it is to motivate at times, I always feel better after I leave the comforts of home and I’m out in the world around other people. And as time goes on, I’m reminded to do my best to show up for the things and people I care about. There just might not be a next time, and I don’t want to take that for granted.

2 weeks ago, some friends came over to hang out. It had been a while, and it was nice to have a night just to catch up. During our time together, we learned our buddy was playing a show at a private party on Halloween. As they described the event, I blurted out, “ I WANNA GO!!!!” before we were even invited. The structure of the event seemed super cool to me, and taboo or not, prior to the event we had an address for the house and our time to show up.

On Halloween day, both Tracy and I did our typical thing, where we loaded ourselves up with tasks and depleted whatever was left in our social battery. As we drew closer to the party, I could feel us sinking into our couch. We pushed through it and started our drive over to the south side of Richmond, where the party was taking place.

And I’m so glad we did.

Sometimes the vibe is just right, and that was the case with this event. A lot of thought and care went into making the event special. Once the music started, people slowly started letting their hair down, so to speak, and the place erupted into joy, dancing, and laughter. It was just what I needed when I needed it. It seemed like everyone needed that environment, too. To be in a space with like-minded people and just let go for a few hours. It was yet another reminder to show up for the people and things that matter to us.

Tiny snippet from Saturday night.

As we wrap up our final shows for the year, we hope to see some of you out there. All I can say is that if you feel the clutches of comfort trying to take over, we’ll do our best to make you glad you came out for a few hours. If you aren’t anywhere near these final events, it never hurts to tell your friends in the region that we might be worth checking out. We certainly aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, but we also can’t say when we’ll be back through some of these parts again, so let’s all try to make the next week or so count, deal?

11/6/26 - Reading, PA - Pleasuretone w/Faux Fear & Obsidian Mary

11/7/26 - Boonton, NJ - Hidden Tracks Records w/ Shutter, Twomoonsaway, Afterneath

11/8/26 - Boston, MA - Deep Cuts w/ Honey Cassette, Yes, Chef!

11/14/26 - Richmond,VA - Cobra Cabana w/ Sweeping Promises, Radon Abatement

As always, food, drink, and record store recos are always welcome if you know of some good spots in these areas.

XOXO!

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Somewhere along the way, I started hanging little failure signs on anything that didn’t go according to plan, when things not going according to plan is simply a day in the life for most of us. More upsetting is what happens when even the things the rest of the world would consider accomplishments start looking like missed marks. It takes a special kind of talent to turn evidence that you are succeeding into proof that you have somehow failed.

No record release ever goes exactly as planned. No two release cycles unfold the same way. They all start with grand ideas and aspirations, but then the record comes out and the universe tells you what, if any, value it holds. It doesn’t care what you were aiming to achieve. The record has a life of its own that, despite your best attempts to control or nurture it, never had the intention of meeting your expectations.

Every artist knows this, yet we are all still guilty of sprinkling a little precious hope into the work when we release it into the world. We secretly wonder if maybe this will be the one where something shakes loose and you move up some invisible ladder only you can see. Even those who create art primarily for themselves can’t help but feel the wind in their sails when the outside world responds positively to something they have made. Discovering that something you created has traveled beyond your imagination and actually means something to a stranger is intoxicating. For a brief moment, you feel like you aren’t creating in a vacuum after all.

There is nothing wrong with these feelings. The problem begins when we start using the outside world’s response (or lack of one) as a measuring stick for something as abstract and personal as success.

There is a natural inclination to raise the stakes each time the creative process begins anew. Experience creates an expectation of progress: you want to make something you haven’t made before while drawing upon everything you’ve learned from the work that came before it. You hope to avoid old mistakes, refine the things within your control, and somehow improve the outcome of everything that isn’t. The trouble is that experience may make us better at the work, but it doesn’t necessarily give us any greater control over what happens to it once we share it.

Over the past decade, I have also started applying this unhealthy thought process to everything I do, and a workaholic was made. I won’t say born, because I created this all by myself.

The consequence of being this obsessive, of being so driven by the idea that I could eventually feel a win, is that I keep my head down and rarely stop working. I literally spend so much time looking down at my laptop and phone that somewhere around two years ago, I pinched a nerve in my neck that refuses to heal. It causes chronic pain as well as a tingling sensation that radiates down my left arm before exploding like a firework into my thumb and forefinger.

It often jolts me awake at night, a nagging ache that has begun to feel like more than just my left side being out of whack. Maybe something about the way I am living is misaligned, too. I have tried all of the basics: stretched, exercised, and massaged it in search of relief, but nothing has worked. The pain persists and now I am certain it as an unsubtle message from my body: LOOK UP!

My body knows there has been other casualties from constantly looking down. When I am chronically doing, creating, making, and pushing toward whatever comes next, something awful happens: I stop feeling a sense of accomplishment altogether. Instead of reaching a finish line and enjoying my destination, I create a new one and move it even farther away. Over recent years, even the idea of a finish line has vanished. There is no line at all now, only a tunnel, and it has no end. I am both the well intended Charlie Brown and my own cruel Lucy.

The logical response would be to hit pause, reset, and try to find that sense of joy again. Instead, my fellow workaholics dig in and try even harder, as though more effort might somehow solve the problem created by too much of it. It is like trying to assemble a puzzle with no border or edge pieces: nothing to tell me where it ends. The possibilities for what to fix, improve, or attempt next simply keep expanding until the work becomes a sightline with no horizon.

A person like me, who spends so much time with her head down, is actively missing the world just outside the window, including the very things that excite my brain and inspire it to travel somewhere new. Without occasionally walking around with my head in the clouds (insert the Hüsker Dü song here), I have fewer dreams, and there is considerably less light. There is no worldview inside this tunnel of mine.

The video at the top of this post is our home. It is also one of the handful of places under our roof where we like to listen to and write our own music. When I finally stopped working long enough to look up, this beautiful view was simply waiting for me to notice it. I filmed it in an effort to remind myself that this is what is actually real.

Our plants are thriving. The sun pours through the windows, filling the room with a comforting warmth. It has been here all along and no ruler is needed to appreciate its grandeur. I just need to remember to look up more often than I put my head down. When I do, the tunnel disappears and the rest of the world comes back into view.

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It was a single thread in a discussion between Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Aniston in the new issue of Interview Magazine. Sometimes a random sentence can unlock a door in a person.

For me, as a woman who is not an actual mother, it made me think about the things artists create—things that contain our DNA and are delivered into a world that may or may not be kind to them. Just like parents, we have no control over what happens to our offspring once they leave the nest. When an artist’s “child” leaves, it rarely comes back, and it is easy to wonder if it was ever ours in the first place.

I am a parent while making music, but I stop being its parent once it enters the world.

Parents talk about how having children alters their lives forever, and I am certain artists experience a version of this too. We nurture something that begins inside of us, obsess over it, worry about it, watch it slowly become something separate from ourselves, and then we eventually let it go. We devote months or years to raising a tiny idea until it can survive without us and it grows up to become a book, a painting, a play, choreography, a clothing line, a recipe, or a record. Something that isn’t us exactly, but still contains so much of ourselves.

The irony is that the value of what we produce, is never decided by us. The jury is everyone but the artist. It doesn’t matter how much we believe in what we create; the universe has its own plans and opinions.

You, the audience hold all the power and determine the fate of our art.

Writing a new album is like building a new home from the scraps I have in and around me at the time. Or, in this case, what Kenny and I have together, but also what we bring to any given project as individuals. The songs are created in the now, but they contain the multitudes of everything we have experienced and learned up until this moment. The now sits on top of layers and layers of years that make up our lifetime that brought us up to the edge of this very moment.

The catch is that NOW is such a fleeting and fickle thing.

The process of reaching into the invisible parts of ourselves to make something new—to bring a new life into the world—takes bravery, vulnerability, and a stubborn belief that you have something worthy of sharing. What a strangely (annoyingly?) human thing, this desire to leave our fingerprints all over the planet in the form of some kind of offspring.

Despite containing my flesh and blood, I still need to cut them loose and let them be free. I also don’t want them to come back and visit. If I am being 100% honest, I don’t exactly call on them to visit their mother either. I am actually a terrible parent. Once my kids are gone, I want them to stay gone. I move on. They move on.

And I am childless all over again—an elated empty vessel, waiting to be filled.

The second I am free of one child, my body is already craving the experience of creating something new and different all over again. The cycle is exhausting and awe-inspiring at once. It has also proven to be an almost impossible to break.

This is neither a good habit nor a bad one. There is no choice in the matter. This is who I am and the only life I know. The curious part is never knowing exactly when the process will start all over again. All I know is that it WILL happen again. This may be the only thing in life I can say with certainty. I don’t get to decide whether what comes next will be good or bad. My only power is the strange comfort of knowing that my brain and body will continue to produce art for as long as I breathe. Nature will do what nature does; I just never know what it is going to make out of me next. The whole process is as unpredictable as the weather. Nature will do what nature does; I just never know what it is going to make out of me next.

It is our responsibility right now to talk about HOME, the record we just released and spent years making, but the truth is that all we really want to do is look forward and start creating something new all over again. HOME was yesterday. Talking about it in the present tense already feels a little like chasing my own (old) tail.

HOME may only be the second Outer World record, but for me it is something like my 500,000th creation. The actual number doesn’t matter. What matters is that, like everything that came before it, HOME was once attached to me by an umbilical cord. And now, it isn’t.

I don’t think there is an artist in the world who doesn’t understand some version of this. The promotional process of supporting a new album/book/film can take on the strange feeling of being anchored to an outdated version of yourself. Everyone else is just meeting this thing you made, while you have already lived with it, raised it, lost sleept over it, finished it, and sent it out the door. As you the reader/viewer/listener are saying hello, it is already in our rearview mirror and our goodbyes have long been exchanged.

Maybe the reality is that I don’t want my kids to come back home.

If I keep moving, they can’t find me. This way, I don’t have to let them back in. You can imagine my surprise then when Dahlia Seed—the ’90s me—came knocking while Outer World was busy living in the present tense. I was not prepared for some of my oldest kids to suddenly show up at the door asking to be let back in. And yet, in 2026, they have moved back HOME again.

What happens when an old version of you becomes culturally alive again, but you are no longer that person? I can only describe the feeling so far as both crowded and confounding. My past and present are occupying the same room. My reflection has become a circus mirror, bending reality and distorting time. I recognize myself in these pieces of art spanning decades, but recognition isn’t the same thing as identification.

Maybe this is what art—and children—allow us to do: capture, escape and reinvent ourselves all at once. We make something from who we are at a particular moment and then send it out into the world while we continue becoming someone else. The truth is, what we send away doesn’t keep changing with us. It carries a version of us forward, frozen somewhere in time. And, as time has shows us, the things we send out into the world are perfectly capable of finding their way back home to us years later.

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The Sony PS- F5 vertical turntable from 1983 (center of our band photo) was purchased by me at age 12 from a Crazy Eddie location near my parents house in New Jersey.

This was the first record player I paid for with my own money and I dreamed of taking it everywhere. I envisioned meandering walks together, long rides in the back of my parents car playing record after record, airplane rides for the once a year family vacation we took, and walking to my friend’s house who lived a half mile away.

None of this was true of course. It barely played while sitting unbothered on a flat table surface, no less while being held. I was crushed, but I kept it around my bedroom growing up because just the idea of it kept me dreaming and thinking about how special the feeling was to hear a song you loved, one you picked yourself, in new and exciting place. The idea still thrills me, a familiar song being reborn in a new environment or situation.

Just the concept of mobile music was such a novelty to so many of us at this time, no less the objects that made it possible (portable radio, boom boxes, and Walkmans). I love having this turntable front and center in our home as it still awakens the childlike curiosity and dreamer in me.

That anything started happening in May of this year. My sister and I were out to dinner the Friday of Memorial Day weekend when we got a call from a hospital near my parents. My father had been admitted due to some sort of minor stroke. He is a caretaker for my mother, so it was inevitable that someone would travel down to help out as we assessed his health (a family friend was able to stay with my mother until we arrived). In the end, all was okay, and the stroke was minor. All in all, we spent a week down there helping take care of my mother with early dementia and securing appropriate support as my father recovered.

The good - they were finally spooked enough to know that it was time to move into a facility that could better take care of them.

A breaking of their chain.

The less good - this meant trying to tie up multiple medical loose ends, take multiple trips down there and back, find them a place to live, hire movers, help pack their house, sell their house, the list goes on…all in the span of 12 weeks.

As of this week, we have finally gotten them to Richmond.

This means we get to break our chain, too.

We are free from the worry of a phone call that time would not allow us to solve. Free of sleepless nights worrying about how all this could happen. Free to enter into this touring cycle with a little more peace of mind knowing that there is someone to take care of them while we travel.

We have a new song/video that dropped this week. It’s called “Break that Chain.”

The timing of all this certainly wasn’t planned, but we will gleefully enjoy a little bit more freedom as we race to deliver everyone ‘HOME’.

And yes, we made another candle.

We have also added a few more dates this fall. Full listing and ticket links below:

9/18/26 - Richmond, VA - Fuzzy Cactus
9/19/26 - Durham, NC - Shadowbox Studio
9/20/26 - Charlotte, NC - Snug Harbor
9/22/26 - Athens, GA - Flicker Theatre
9/23/26 - Birmingham, AL- Seasick Records
9/24/26 - Nashville, TN - DRKMTTR
9/25/26 - Memphis, TN - Gonerfest - WISEACRE Brewing Company HQ
9/26/26 - Louisville, KY - Kaiju
9/27/26 - Columbus, OH - Rambling House Music Bar
10/9/26 - Washington, DC - DC Brau
11/6/26 - Reading, PA - Pleasuretone
11/7/26 - Boonton, NJ - Hidden Tracks Records

Hope to see some familiar faces soon. Break those chains, people.

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It is a curious place to be, standing squarely in 2026 as a current artist beginning a press cycle for a new record while also answering interview questions about my ’90s band, Dahlia Seed, as Numero is in the process of reissuing our catalog.

I am, in name, the same person answering both sets of questions. But the thirty years between these two versions of myself have produced, in many cases, very different answers to the same questions. The pendulum swing between past and present—and back again—has revealed a kind of creative growth that wasn’t entirely clear to me until today.

The innocent question at hand: Who do you look up to when you create music? Who are your inspirations?

I paused before answering. Then it dawned on me: the answer to this question has completely changed from 1996 to 2026.

After writing and performing music for so many decades, my current points of inspiration are no longer driven primarily by traditional outside influences like other musicians. I listen to a lot of music, but I am no longer searching for myself inside those songs. I am allowing them to simply be what they are. Today, I listen to music simply for the pleasure of it, without inserting myself into the equation or treating it like a mirror in which I hope to catch a glimpse of myself. That was old me behavior.

Today, I am not actively looking for inspiration outside of myself at all. My current challenge is extending and refining the artist I have spent a lifetime becoming. I have been in a constant state of becoming, continuing to expand and further develop a voice that feels uniquely my own.

This word, becoming, is key here.

The dash between the birth date and death date on a headstone is a lousy representation of what it actually contains. That measly little line is the enormous thing we once called life. Our busy lifetime which was hopefully spent becoming: developing and refining who we are at our core. Did we realize our potential? Or, at the very least, did we spend our lives trying to get there?

That said, no artist exists in a vacuum. I am an avid reader. I have been collecting records since the early ’80s, and I remain endlessly curious about the world around me. I surround myself with books, art, film, and culture from across the globe because all of it feeds my imagination. A houseplant, a single line from a poem, the movement of color in a painting, any one of these things can become the spark that takes a song from an idea into something living and breathing.

If I had to name the person who has had the greatest influence on my songwriting today, it would be my husband.

Kenny is my partner in crime in Outer World and, before that, Positive No. We have been making music together for more than fifteen years, and we share the same restless desire to keep exploring new creative territory. We also share an unsatiable curiousity for the world around us. We seperately carve out time to learn something new every single day.

We spend so much time together under the same roof that, by osmosis, we inevitably influence one another. Our conversations, our listening habits, our arguments, our enthusiasms, and our shared hunger for knowledge continually find their way into the music we make together.

The most unexpected thing I have learned by answering these interview questions thirty years apart is that my inspiration hasn’t disappeared. It has simply changed its form.

When I was younger, I was looking outward, trying to find the people, records, sounds, and ideas that might show me who I could become. Now, after all these years, I find myself looking inward. This isn’t because the world has become less interesting, but because I have finally spent enough time becoming to recognize my own voice when I hear it.

Maybe this is what growing older as an artist really means. We are never finished or complete. The work of a lifetime is simply becoming more fully ourselves.

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We are pleased to announce HOME, our second full-length album, available on 9/18/2026 via K/Courtesy Desk.

Before we go on and on, thank yous are in order.

Keith, Janet, Erin, and Nate, thank you for helping to bring this to life through live performances and recording sessions.

Curtis, Maryam, and Matthew, thank you for being involved in the recording and finishing processes and the extra special care as we got to the finish line to ensure our vinyl masters were correct.

Calvin, Joey, and Pam, thank you for believing in our music and for being a vital part of the effort to get the world to actually hear this thing.

Over the next seven weeks, we'll be sharing songs, videos, stories from making the record, and everything else leading up to September 18. It feels like we've been sitting on this thing forever, and we honestly can't wait for it to finally belong to everyone else.

The songwriting process for HOME began before WDTML was even released. In preparing for what would become the live sets for that album, we simply didn’t have enough songs to fill out 25-30 mins. We wrote two new songs to fill that void. The first of which was to become “Present Perfect Future Past,” which premiered over at POST-TRASH. While we didn’t know it at the time, this song would chart the course for our second effort. It pointed us toward a record that felt more band-driven while pushing even further into international rhythms and experimentation.

Tracy and I never really turn Outer World off in a traditional sense. Often, a Sunday morning can quickly shift into a series of bass line ideas or a phone memo recording of a vocalized drum pattern. The songwriting for this album happened in three fairly distinct blocks, which is a bit different for us. The ideas pre-WDTML, a few post the spring 2024 tour, and a mad dash of songwriting in the middle of 2025 to hit our submission deadlines. One thing people outside the music world don't always realize is that a fall 2026 release actually meant the record—including artwork and vinyl masters—had to be finished by February. What all this means is that most of 2025 was spent hustling to bring this life into the world so it could arrive this year.

It has been a two-year road to get here, which isn’t actually that long between releases, but can also feel like a lifetime. In aging band years, delivering a record and then waiting 8 months to announce is actually kind of a hard secret to keep. It feels amazing to finally be here and talk about all of this.

A few months back, we talked about being in what we call THE MIDDLE. We are now in the FINAL MILE, where things are in motion, and there is a clear finish line ahead. It’s been hard to know if people have been interested in what we are doing this go-round. One thing we've learned over the years is that records don't really find their audience all at once. Sometimes it happens through press, but more often it happens because people tell their friends, come to shows, and keep coming back. That's always meant more to us anyway. There isn’t much time to think about this, as we still have quite a bit to do over the next 7 weeks as we prepare for launch and the tour.

A HUGE thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered the record so far. Orders have been steadily coming in, and it’s so appreciated. We were given no recording or marketing budget, so every order helps us pay down the costs of making this record.

Pre-order HOME here. Pre-order HOME here. Pre-order HOME here.

Lastly…we are hitting the road in September so we can play some of these songs for you! For cities with pre-sale tickets, they are linked below. We are so jazzed to do this, and we’d love to see you. Please come up and say hello if you make it out.

9/18/26 - Richmond, VA - Fuzzy Cactus
9/19/26 - Durham, NC - Shadowbox Studio
9/20/26 - Charlotte, NC - Snug Harbor
9/22/26 - Athens, GA - Flicker Theatre
9/23/26 - Birmingham, AL- Seasick Records
9/24/26 - Nashville, TN - DRKMTTR
9/25/26 - Memphis, TN - Gonerfest - WISEACRE Brewing Company HQ
9/26/26 - Louisville, KY - Kaiju
9/27/26 - Columbus, OH - Rambling House Music Bar
10/9/26 - Washington, DC - DC Brau

We knew from the outset that our guitarist Nate, now navigating the demands of new fatherhood, likely wouldn’t be able to commit to touring behind a new record. We had already begun preparing ourselves for the possibility that, at some point, Outer World would need to continue without him. What we didn’t anticipate was bassist Erin deciding to step away as well, choosing instead to focus her energy on Added Dimensions and Radon Abatement.

There’s no dramatic breakup story lurking beneath the surface. As someone who can barely keep my head above water while playing in a single band, I’ve always been baffled by musicians who somehow juggle multiple projects simultaneously. Erin’s decision to simplify her life by shedding one commitment made perfect sense to all of us. Popfest in Providence served as a fitting final high note. Nate and Erin made the trip north with us one last time, bringing that era of our band to a close. Afterward, they were officially released from their Outer World duties.

This shrinking line up meant that just as we finished our new record and landed what felt like a dream opportunity by signing with K Records, we suddenly found ourselves needing to replace not one, but two members. It was hardly the scenario we had envisioned while celebrating either milestone. There is no hiding the truth. It took the wind out of my sails and I fell into a depressed state. It took me some time to find the energy to move forward and rebuild Outer World from the ground up all over again.

We kicked around a handful of possibilities as it would relate to the practical realities of a future that would hopefully include more touring. Finding people to play in a band is already no small task, especially over the age of 30 when people start settling into their adult lives with marriage, children, and careers coming before something as money losing as playing music. We get it. As two people with intense day jobs, it is in no way easy to balance all of the things that come with playing in an active band (practices, booking shows, creating flyers, making album art, writing all of the press releases, making videos, marketing, and oh yeah - finding time to write new music)! The thirties are typically when sane people all decide that playing in a band sounds way more fun than it actually is and it ditch it all together. These quitters get no judgment from us. Our lives would be so much easier if we didn’t have DNA that required us to make art and keep playing music. I think we are likely the weirdos here. Most people figure out a much healthier, saner path to follow in adulthood.

Outer World had always been built around adaptation and reinvention, and this seemed like another opportunity to see what the band could become rather than simply recreate what it had been.

So how does a band move forward after losing the backbone of its live sound? In our case, technology made the answer surprisingly simple. Kenny and I write and record everything ourselves at home, meaning the foundation of every Outer World song already exists inside a computer. In many ways, we’ve always been a two-piece band that invited others to help bring the music to life onstage.

This year, we began performing as a duo simply to see what was possible with less. It wasn’t the future either of us imagined after a lifetime spent in rock bands, but it felt like an opportunity to grow rather than retreat. We had no interest in standing onstage and karaoke-ing to our own music, so we reworked our backing tracks to leave room for live performance and spontaneity. Kenny now splits his attention between guitar, keyboards, and electronics, while I’ve added a dash of keyboards and percussion to my usual duties.

This is where the real excitement for me comes into place. Enter new member Janet Lundy (an old friend via WRIR which doubles as our second family). We may have lost our stringed instrument players, but we gained a second singer. For anyone who has ever watched B-52s live footage, this is the best example I can think of in describing the magic that can come with two singers. Janet had sung a little with us in our previous band Positive No live for our final performance and we LOVED playing with her.

The voice as an instrument has been my obsession since the ‘90s. I know most people only think of me as a singer, but as one of the songwriters in every band I have ever played in, I have always thought of my voice as one of the instruments. I believe this is what makes my style of writing original, writing guitar/bass/keyboard parts as if they are vocal parts. Over the years I then began exploring adding more and more vocal layers. This is where my obsession with Bjork helped to inform me as to what was possible with the human voice (Medulla especially). I was too insecure to really dig into these ideas until I was well into my 30s, but now that the gates have been opened, there is no turning back for me. I have never heard just one voice as I write a new song, I hear many voices. This will be the first time in my life when I can really investigate and expand the melodies and rhythms I have wanted to use live, but was lacking the resources and tools to make this a reality.

Every record I have made since the early 2000s has been one long journey to exploring what I can do with my voice in layered, recorded form. The problem with adding complex harmonies and distinct, multiple vocals, is I cannot recreate them live with ease. I have learned that I HATE singing to myself as a backing track, so if I wanted to bring the energy and personality that a voice brings to a live performance, we would need to add a second singer.

We had initially invited Janet to contribute backing vocals to our new record, and the results were everything we had hoped for. Hearing these songs come to life in a way that finally matched the versions I had carried in my head for years was genuinely thrilling. The chemistry was immediate. When the time came to reimagine Outer World as a full band, Janet was the first person I thought of. Her presence has not only helped shape the group’s evolving identity, but has also given me renewed inspiration as a singer—and, on occasion, now a percussionist and keyboard player too.

As the lineup evolved, we have also used this opportunity to rethink how the songs functioned in a live setting. The arrangements have been reshaped to give them more movement, more air, and a stronger sense of swing than their recorded counterparts. At the same time, we’ve embraced new technology that allows our drummer, Keith Renna—one of my oldest friends and a musical collaborator since the 1990s—to perform to a click track while controlling his own in-ear monitor mix.

That level of flexibility has become essential to our growth. Outer World songs often contain ten or more layers of samples, textures, effects, and synthesized sounds woven alongside traditional rock instrumentation. As we moved forward without Erin and Nate, giving Keith the ability to manage exactly what he hears onstage became a crucial part of translating the music from the studio to a live setting.

We’re still very much in the process of figuring it all out. There are plenty of moving parts, plenty of mistakes to be made, and plenty left to learn. But that’s precisely what makes it exciting. After years of playing in rock bands where the challenges often felt familiar, stepping into unfamiliar territory has been invigorating. I’ve always had a quiet appreciation for being bad at something new. It requires vulnerability, patience, and a willingness to fail in public…all of which create the possibility for genuine growth. At this stage in my musical life, discovering new ways to learn feels every bit as rewarding as discovering new ways to create.

Adding Janet as our 4th member to primarily sing allows me to think even more about our vocals and build new sound structures upon the foundation we laid over the past 5 years. As a songwriter and singer, I cannot express how exciting it is to go from a performance in mono to something much closer to stereo. I didn’t know that this was the future I wanted and needed, but now that has landed in our lap, I know we are exactly where we needed to be.

Eventually, Tracy and I started writing music together, which was filled with name-checks and references to bands we liked. A fun or not-so-fun fact for bands is that working titles for songs can often be borrowed from other artists. This could become cumbersome if the other person wasn’t clear on the reference, and in that era, we would have to stop, pull out the record, get lost in the song for a bit, then resume strumming our guitars.

Fast forward to streaming.

The dawn of streaming and the playlist feature also aligns with when we started making records together seriously. And since that time, each record, or sometimes even a single, will get a running playlist for inspiration or reference. We rarely share these out. That changes today.

Below is a link to ten songs that rolled through our minds during the making of “La Dimora”. Some will be clear love letters, others not so much. Enjoy the songs behind the song.

The tune my music link lets you listen on your preferred streaming service. Spotify is simply an easy embed and preview. We hope you enjoy!

LINK TO STREAM ON YOUR PREFERRED SERVICE!

I should back up before we get too deep into what is on the horizon and what that all feels like. Before any “middle” or “pre-game,” there are many months and years of planning. For context, the partnership with K and Courtesty Desk was announced in late April. Those discussions started a year prior. We had not yet recorded one second of new music. This isn’t unusual, and in these discussions, deadlines begin to form for possible release dates for new records, based on distribution and manufacturing lead times.

It all takes time and a series of coordinated steps to make everything happen and hit release dates in a given year. We aren’t getting any younger, so the faster we can get music out, the better. If you know us and were wondering why we seemed so busy last year, even though there wasn’t much to talk about, this is a good indication of why.

There is also the booking of shows. We do not have an agent, and I struggle to imagine that we will ever have one. This is easily our least favorite part of being in a band. It’s a slog, a part-time job, and a very humbling process. When things work out, it’s great. When you are begging the internet for a show two weeks out, there aren’t many worse feelings. The lead times for tour bookings continue to get longer and longer, so the moment one season of shows is complete, it’s almost time to book another.

We’ve known the owners of Goner Records through record nerd groups online for quite a while. Their annual festival has gone from a perfectly sized event we love to attend to the closest thing we’ve ever participated in, like a high school reunion. Music obsessives from all over travel in to see bands that might not be massive, but fit within a subgenre of cool. Tracy has continued to stay in touch and connected, and through this, we were given a loose offer to play during the festival LAST year.

All this to say, it’s been a very exciting few weeks for us. We are amped to announce many more things in the coming months. It’s been a very well-planned road trip to get here, and the journey continues to be worth the wait.

ALSO - TOODY! Man or Astroman! The Drags! Powerplant! Helene Barbier! Get us there now!

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And still: release day holds its own strange gravity. A single or an album can feel like a musician’s version of giving birth, sending a miniature self out into the world with no control over what it will become. Like any parent, you can hope for the best, but whoever grows into (or fails to) is the great unknown.

Kenny and I don’t have children, but we do have two decades’ worth of songs. It is work that carries our fingerprints, our habits, our hard wiring. When a record is finished, we live with it for months, sometimes years, making sure that when it finally steps into the world, it’s been cared for: the mixes and masters dialed in, the artwork acts as both a shield and a baptizing gown, our “birth announcement” ready to send.

This brings us to today: we’re releasing the first single of the year, “La Dimora.” In Italian, it means home, and it’s a puzzle piece of how we landed on the name for our Substack.

Home is not a fixed place. It is an evolving definition. It begins in the safety of a womb and then moves into the certainty of a parent’s arms. In childhood, it expands to classrooms and friendships. In early adulthood, we discover independence and, for the first time, begin to create spaces that answer only to ourselves.

Over time, home shifts again. The idea of a “forever home” becomes less about permanence and more about refuge. It is where masks fall away, and we settle into who we truly are. Our spaces begin to mirror our values; in the objects we keep, the traditions we practice, and the care we invest. Home is both private and communal: the place where identity forms and connection radiates outward. Across a lifetime, we build more than shelter. We build an environment that reflects who we have been, and who we are still becoming.

We move through becoming, shaped by people, places, and art, until the circle closes. In its completion, we return home not as just a place, but as a state, eternally resting within the vast universe. An Outer World, if you will.

At first glance, “La Dimora” is a two-minute, action-packed nod to spy-film chase scenes. The real drama, though, lives in the lyrics that are tempered by non-lexical vocables, the wordless sounds that step in when language can’t. Because how do you name, in plain sentences, the raw vulnerability of a world in distress and an entire planet that feels increasingly unmoored?

A melodic primal scream won’t fix what’s broken. But it can be cathartic. In “La Dimora,” it is an act of release, and a way of taking my voice back in a decade that has made me and so many others feel silenced.

The other big news alongside the single: we’re joining the K Records family, in collaboration with Courtesy Desk.

Why this matters to me (Tracy).

I started buying from the K catalog in the late ’80s, back when I was the independent music buyer at Flipside. Mark Pickerel—then the Screaming Trees drummer, and my Sub Pop sales rep, kept pointing me toward bands on K. That’s how I was first introduced to Beat Happening.

Seeing Beat Happening open for Fugazi at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey, is what made me fall in love with them. In a room full of volume, their primitive power came to life. I had never heard a voice or seen a performer come across with seemingly no filter. Calvin Johnson was confidently 100% himself with no visible fear of judgment or consequence. It was more punk than Fugazi in that moment, and to this day, the only performance I recall with vivid detail. The whole experience wasn’t a show; it was a revelation.

Fast forward to 1993: I moved to Seattle to work at C/Z Records. I was a sales rep by title, but also a buyer who dealt with regional labels, including K. On my first round of intro calls, a co-worker decided to “initiate” me: when I called Calvin, they warned that if he dropped into a deep voice, that was his fake voice. THAT voice is the one he saved for people he didn’t like. I was 22 and didn’t yet know the obvious truth: Calvin has just one voice, and it is very deep. That same deadpan boom, the bassline in a band with no bass, was also the unmistakable sound of Beat Happening.

I hung up in tears after enduring an entire call in Calvin’s most vibratory, most resonant register. Around me, the office broke into laughter. The joke was on me, and I was mortified. The message was received: Calvin is Calvin. A lightbulb went off. What I witnessed on stage a few years earlier was not a performance. This, too, was Calvin being purely Calvin.

This was the start of our long-lasting acquaintance. We bonded over Lee Hazlewood and Ridgewood, N.J., where both of our families had roots. He played briefly in a band with my boyfriend at the time—Walk the Plank. I recorded a few songs at Dub Narcotic, his studio, in the mid-’90s. We’ve both stayed in independent music through the best and worst of it. Joining forces with K in 2026 feels surreal and yet somehow, completely inevitable.

I took the long way, but I found my way home. Welcome to “La Dimora”.

-TKW

Quite the opposite has happened. I have more to say than I realized.

I’ll spare anyone reading this my personal history with social anxiety and mental health. I spent a long time being a yes person and would have near panic attacks having pretty simple, direct conversations. This was also true of my online presence. Most of it is pretty light. Part by design, part is the crippling fear of being judged or of navigating dialogue that may be viewed as unpopular by the outside world. Being near a partner who is rarely afraid to speak her mind, and after years of therapy, a lot of this has gotten easier for me. I am also VERY middle-aged now, and my fucks left to give shrink by the minute.

Let’s talk about actual costs.

We have a few shows later in the month. We probably could have survived the handful of dates without new merch, but we’ve always fared pretty well selling t-shirts, so we decided to place an order. Our quant design remains a fan favorite, and we’ve now done it in 5 different colorways. Making a new one seemed fun and easy, and since there was a purchasing history, I had a general idea of the budget.

So I thought.

I’ve been making t-shirts for nearly three decades. It’s important to me that they are of decent material and quality, and that they are a win-win item. We make money, and a purchaser feels like they paid a fair price. When the quote came back this go-round, showing that a 2-color design would be $20 wholesale per shirt, my jaw dropped. I knew our margin might shrink a tad doing 2 colors, but not like this. At that cost, tees would need to sell for around $30-$35, which simply doesn’t feel right.

I love my printer, and they were kind enough to go round with me to sort out an option that would get us back to where we feel is the most we can charge for something like this. We won’t dive into politics today, but make no mistake, tariffs and war are the drivers of this. And for perspective, that exact same shirt and design were $12-$13 just two years ago. And for a double perspective, in the prior decade, this cost would have been around $8- $9 per unit.

We are a very small band. We have to run small batches because that is what the market demands, and we don’t have space to store piles of unused items. Making short runs of tees has always served us, and I fear those days might be changing.

The emotional cost.

I had been debating digging into this topic, but at this point, it feels important to talk about.

Booking our upcoming handful of shows was exhausting and demoralizing. Booking is not easy for anyone, but it can be very hard not to take things personally. We do all the things we believe are right. Have always made connections with other bands and promoters, show up regularly at our local spots, and do our best to ensure we do our homework to connect with like-minded people and spaces. We go to shows. We buy records and merch. We stay in touch with people.

We work pretty hard to respond to everyone who writes to us. And quickly. I realize that club owners and bookers can’t always do this. We are talking about something a little different here. Dozens of direct referrals from good friends and respected peers, met with nothing. No response. Not a yes or no. Or a handful of half answers that then trailed off to more nothing.

Not everyone will like our music. That is fine. Nobody owes us anything. I do fear this community and these scenes everyone seems to long for slipping away, which is just sad. As we get older and less attractive to younger peers, I just can’t help but wonder how we will continue to navigate these spaces without an extra layer of stress that didn’t exist even two years ago.

All of this stuff takes time. Time that we could be writing, exercising, hanging with friends and family. Whether it is going back and forth trying to find new merch items or spending hours each day looking for places and people to play with, it all has a cost.

I do want to give a huge thank you to Tom Hyland for booking our Brooklyn show and jumping in to help in other cities. One of the good ones. Tom has a great show on WFMU you can check out here, and if you are in the NYC area, you can check out some of the great events he puts on each month here.

A few housekeeping items for us…

As mentioned, playing a few dates en route to Providence Popfest, which has announced a fest comp today via Lost Sound Tapes. That can be pre-ordered here, and it includes US and many other dope bands.

5/1 Bethlehem, PA: (ClubRealWorld Presents) @National Sokols

5/2 Brooklyn, NY: Love, Burns, and Special Pillow @ Hart Bar

5/3 Providence, RI Popfest: Sweeping Promises, Nova One, Strange Passage, and Betty Brite

5/9 Richmond, VA: Vulture Feather, VV, and Infrastructure @ Banditos

All this got me thinking about AI tools, music creation, and where we fit in. At some point, we plan to showcase some specifics of how we make certain sounds. Not giving the magic away completely, but some fun hacks we use to blow stuff up. The songwriting process is something I deeply enjoy, and the thought of taking a shortcut with it feels quite bizarre. Making music can be time-consuming, messy, and absolutely soul-crushing at times. When it works, and something you’ve made creates an indescribable feeling, it’s hard to want to give that away.

To date, most of the Outer World songs have been written and recorded as pretty high-fidelity demos. We rely on a variety of VSTs, some of which are AI-powered. It isn’t as if we buy these things based on one fact or another; it’s based on what we need for our workflow and a song. The majority of what we do is quite traditional (ie, play an instrument and record it), but I’d be lying if I said we didn't allow a plug-in to do some minor EQ’ing on its own, so we can move on to other things we’d rather spend time on. It feels bizarre to imagine a world where we’d ever type in the phrase “write a bridge to this song similar to Bad Mouth by Fugazi. The bridge begins at 1:49 and lasts until 2:10.”

By day, I work in the industry formerly known as advertising. I don’t even know what we call it today, since half of what we are trying to solve is getting anyone to pay attention to anything we make, whether it is an ad or not. I mention this because the past two years have been nothing but discussions about gen AI in our industry, and I’ve been to a variety of conferences where so-called experts have talked about the magic of these products. During one of these events, I was having a conversation with some folks in the crowd about my industry, my perceived impact on it, and how to utilize these tools for some benefit without feeling completely shitty about it. The topic of generative music came up, and I went a bit quiet. This was mostly because I didn’t want to talk about being in a band. I love being in a band, but it can be a difficult conversation with some people who have bizarre perceptions of what it means or just want to talk about how epic their high school talent show was.

Regardless, it did come up, and I explained that, despite having pretty serious careers, my wife and I still aggressively pursue writing, creating, releasing, and performing music. As you might imagine, the next question was whether we ever used AI to create music.

Remember a few sentences ago when I mentioned not wanting to talk about being in a band. This is what I get.

There wasn’t much to say back to the person. We love spending time creating and unlocking doors to sound so much that we’d rather waste all the days and weekends we have writing one song than write some prompts to do it in ten minutes.

A colleague of mine was very hyped on Suno when it came out. His entire mission was to make songs about people around the office. It was mildly humorous until we got to the metal song about me. Within the first second of it playing, I recognized what it had scrubbed. It was nearly note-for-note “Skin o’ My Teeth” by Megadeth. And it felt so wrong instantly. My co-worker would likely abandon and move on to something else that piqued his interest in the next week. Others would and have used these tools for monetization and creator credit, likely unknowingly, that their chill vibes track was probably based on and stolen from a Röyksopp song.

I love tech and learning new things. As we think about our next release, there are so many avenues we get to explore that we couldn’t have imagined even two years ago. This is all quite daunting at times, as there is always something to do that has nothing to do with writing or playing music. As creative types, this freedom allows us to explore different things related to our music, which is inherently exciting. As AI tech continues to be shoved down our collective throats, I remain unimpressed by its lack of taste and polish. If we know anything, you can’t pay for taste or style, no matter how hard you try.

I did respond to the person at that conference.

“We don’t use AI to make music because we just love the process of making music together, as time-consuming as it can be.”

He smirked and continued talking about himself.

What a day! Local pedal maker Lantern Manufacturing (thanks, Andon!) organized the first-ever effects event (that we know of) here in our backyard. We had the opportunity to catch up with old friends, make some new friends, and meet the makers of some of the most interesting effects pedals around.

A few years ago, we toured Earthquaker Devices on a tour day off and have remained in touch with Julie and Jamie (Harriet the Spy, Party of Helicopters) ever since. A million years ago, Jamie and I were labelmates on Troubleman Records, so we had plenty to bond about, and Julie is a powerhouse of a human - just brilliant and, as a CEO of the company, remarkably inspiring in a very male-dominated space. Any opportunity to catch up with them is a pleasure, and their pedals have been an important part of our band's musical journey as we continue to shape our sound.

I was also especially excited to see that Death By Audio had a color variant of the Echo Master, the pedal I exclusively use when we perform live, and that has grown to become an extension of my voice over the past few years. The top-right photo shows the purchases that came home with us, including a colorful XLR cable made with love and care by Ray Raydecker from Maryland.

The other highlight of this event, held at Stone Brewery, is meeting other pedal appreciators (Matt Linkous tops that list), plus seeing lots of familiar faces from our local music community - some of whom have also been photographed above.

Top middle: John Rickman (Eggs, J&R Music World)

Top left: Me with Greta Brinkman (Unseen Force, L7, Debbie Harry band, White Cross, Moby, Drug Lord, and so many more). For you locals who know and love Greta, she is in town for the month, so now is the time to track her down for some quality time.

Middle right: Tannon Pendland (Leather Hearse, Gauchiste) at the Earthquaker table

Bottom Left: Kenny as the Death By Audio table with Oliver Ackermann in the distance from A Place To Bury Strangers

Here is to hoping this becomes an annual event and moves into a larger space to accommodate the droves of people who were as excited as we were to check out all the gear.

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We started this “band” in early 2020. It was known to us that we’d be wrapping up our previous project, Positive No, at the tail of 2019, so we began to discuss what might be the next chapter of our musical world. We were pretty fried from nearly a decade of straddling obscurity and replacing band members every year or so. When the world shut down that March, as terrible as it was, I think we were both pretty relieved to have some downtime. It had been almost a decade of having an album or some sort of release cycle to deal with.

I put “band” in quotes because we believed we would just write songs together and place them online when they were done. No shows, no industry, just direct interaction with whoever might care via bandcamp. Playing in a live band together again wasn’t something we discussed that much.

Our first batch of demos dropped on October 2, 2020. This was the blurb that accompanied the music.

“Outer World is our new musical language. No practice space, no full band, simply individuals having to pick themselves up after decades of rock bands. New instruments to learn, new software, new to us recording techniques.”

It took us another year to drop another batch of songs online. This was the pace I believed we would work in. Behind the scenes, we were spending a ton of time writing and learning how to create better home recordings. With no one to account to, we were making our own rules.

All that was about to change.

During the pandemic, the first Sweeping Promises record arrived. It was lightning in a bottle, and we were hooked. Through a variety of direct connections and exchanges, we all met, and a friendship was born. When Lira called Tracy to offer to record us in their new Kansas home studio, we took that as an opportunity to hang out with our new friends and take a music-based vacation we probably wouldn’t have otherwise. This became “Who does the music love?”. We wrapped tracking the summer of 2022.

This is where the middle happens. The record was completed later that year, sent to a few labels, and we were signed by early 2023. The album finally came out in March of 2024. I’ll spare you the details of the how and the why, but there's a massive gap between all of this, and you've got to do a whole lot of waiting. The songs are so old that you only want to play the new ones you’ve been working on. You’ve got to book shows, but you can’t share a record that doesn’t exist or point to press or creds that haven't happened yet. If you are lucky enough to have a past life people care about, you are riding on that. If you don’t, you're either pulling favors or just waiting for something to happen.

It’s such a bizarre place to be. Each year, people leave cities, clubs, booking agencies, and more. Your once large Rolodex in Philadelphia? Yeah, they are all gone now. The writers who championed you? Their publication went under, or they really got into free jazz. Life moves on, and as a band, you become less of a musician and more of a utility knife: marketer, content creator, publicist, mail-order champ, and manager.

And yes, we are currently back in the middle. And yes, we will have news to share soon, but not yet. In booking a handful of dates around a trip to Providence for popfest (psssttt we are playing Providence Popfest on Sunday May 3), it’s been all too clear a reminder that all of the goodwill and momentum from our 2024 release is parked somewhere back in 2025, waiting for us to hurry up and make a big announcement that we are moving forward and not just sitting still.

The music world has never been easy, and it feels even more difficult to navigate in 2026. Part age, part culture shift, part I don’t know.

But we remain hopeful. The middle provides time to dream and cook up new ideas. And as we race toward what will be our next big news, I try and remind myself that the faucet could cut back on at any minute and we might be back to longing for our last middle period.

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Lie in bed for a few extra minutes, embracing one another for comfort and warmth.

Take care of the morning animal needs.

Get coffee brewing.

Light a candle.

Put on the news or a record.

These home rituals begin each day. These foundations set our rhythms and prepare us for whatever comes next.

Plants, colorful walls, beautiful art, books, and trinkets surround our space. It’s a design and flow that makes sense to us. We were once told that our house looked like it was designed by a blind kindergarten teacher. We took that as a compliment.

Our home provides the seeds for creativity and wonder. Anything can hang on a wall. There are piles of scrap paper lying around for inspiration. At any given time, you might see one of us scribbling something down, humming into a phone, or clearing off the contents of our white coffee table to take an overhead photo on it.

We both have day jobs. These support us and fund our art. Music has never really made us any meaningful amount of money. We jokingly say we lose $10,000 a year playing it, which is probably true.

It’s hard to explain this to most people. American culture feeds on consumption and growth. On paper, the time and energy that goes into being a band makes little sense. The financial rewards don’t really exist, and to the mainstream music consumer, our band doesn’t either. It occasionally happens for a select few, but as soon as it arrives, it leaves. No music star stays up in the sky for long.

Yet, here we are. Wrapping mastering on our second full Outer World release and preparing for another album cycle. This is the 10th time Tracy and I have done this together across all of our projects. We are already embracing our trade-offs for the year, which means going on tour vs a nice vacation together, or which holidays we’ll actually get to spend at home. Picking out singles (that alone is no easy task), figuring out which song might need (or translate easily into) a video, and how that will get paid for. Navigating our network to help book shows and following up with countless bands to ensure the bill is locked for a city far away.

We are tired and excited. Broken yet whole. Eager while patient.

We are thrilled for you to be reading this, and despite the honesty that comes with being aging musicians, ecstatic to deliver our new record to the world.

A studio engineer in the ‘90s called the recording process the humilatron. The ability to hide behind a wall of sound is erased, and each member, each musical part, stands naked for all to judge and pick apart. Standing vulnerably beneath this audio magnifying glass takes immense bravery and stamina. Whatever confidence you may have had in the parts you wrote, the way you performed them, and the technical choices you made (tone, gear, attack, and so on) is tested and tried. You have brought yourselves down a path that may or may not bring you to where you expected. This part of the process is particularly humbling.

As a singer, I have already spent months agonizing over lyrics because I have learned from past recordings that careless word choices haunt me for a lifetime. I already know that regardless of whatever I sing or how I sing, my gender has already pushed away potential listeners who have decided they don’t like female singers. For others, my personal use of melody and voice - two things that define me to my core as a singer- is not for everyone. I have had to push away 35 years of hearing/reading people’s opinions of me and my instrument, which, as my voice is not something I can easily shed or change. Despite those negative voices in my head challenging me every step of the way, I keep singing. Through the recording, mixing, and mastering process, the experience of listening to my own voice becomes even more intimate than staring into a mirror without clothes. The human voice is my spirit out of the body, and it is surreal to have it captured like a lightning bug in a jar, glowing among the confines of a single track.

Outer World has made it through the grueling process of writing, recording, and mixing. We are almost through the technical part of making an album and are currently mastering the material. For those who don’t know, mixing is where you can poke and prod each individual track as you please, and then you unite them with all the other tracks, praying to the universe that when they are merged altogether, it sounds like the dream you had years ago when you first wrote the song. Here, you are deciding how much space there is between the tracks and how you want them all to interact with one another. Mastering takes all that careful tweaking, sequences, and helps create a transition between the songs, as well as boosting volume and adding a final glaze of EQ balancing.

By this point, there are thousands of ways you get things right or wrong. Some things you can control, many you cannot. It is a rollercoaster of self-doubt, balanced by celebrations as a puzzle finally comes together to form a picture they can no longer bear to look upon. At this stage of the journey, most musicians are burnt out from hearing their music under every possible scrutiny. In short, Kenny and I are tired.

We have completed an album, and we have no idea what it actually sounds like. We have no idea if anyone will like it or what the future holds. There are so many more places along this path to get lost or stuck: finding a record label, ensuring the pressing of the record sounds right, securing distribution, figuring out tours to support the release, keeping a live band inspired to stay with you along the way, creating merch to sell and hopefully help pay off your recording debt, and creating all the marketing tools to ensure your music reaches the right ears. All of this is because of your art, but suddenly it becomes about everything BUT your songs. The future is an exciting, unwritten page and daunting at the same time. With so many hurdles to cross, it is a wonder any record ever makes it to the finish line of release. It makes the music fan in me appreciate when an album not only makes it out into the world, but gives the illusion that the journey to get there was not just easy, but effortless.

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