Cass McCombs Announces New Album, Hear: “Peace”

Singer-songwriter Cass McCombs has returned with news of his next album, Interior Live Oak. Out August 15, the record was inspired in part by last year’s archival reissue, Seed Cake on Leap Year, on which McCombs revisited previously unreleased music he recorded in San Francisco at the turn of the millennium.

Alongside the album announcement comes “Peace,” an earnest rocker that seamlessly blends acoustic riffs and a folk-rock twang into a hypnotically simple slow burner. Jangly acoustics alternate with McCombs’s relaxed vocals (“When we say goodbye / We say peace” is equally tranquil and heartbreaking), building a deeper soundscape with each verse. The video is a fisheye montage of black and white studio clips that speak to the “return to roots” ethos of this entire era. The single follows up “Priestess,” a warm, reverb-heavy track with a Khruangbin-adjacent groove that celebrated McCombs’s return to Domino, his label from 2007 (Dropping The Writ) to 2015 (A Folk Set Apart).

McCombs will spend August touring Europe both on his own and supporting Father John Misty before returning for a string of shows in California in September. Tickets to the headlining shows are available on Wednesday, June 18. Check out the Interior Live Oak tracklist and album art, and listen to “Peace” below.