Listen to “A 1000 Times,” the First Track from Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam

Earlier this year, former Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij revealed that he would be releasing a collaborative album with former Walkmen frontman Hamilton Leithauser via Glassnote Records.

Batmanglij spoke this morning with SiriusXMU’s Jenny Eliscu to debut new song “A 1000 Times” and talk about his creative partnership with Leithauser.

From their conversation, it sounds as if the material on the album has been gestating since 2014 when the two first decided to write material together after the release of Leithauser’s solo album Black Hours, which Batmanglij contributed to.

Batmanglij said he had been a long-time fan of Leithauser and had a strong desire to experiment with a new way to bring out the singer’s signature howl. He told Eliscu:

I always wanted to try to really capture his voice in a way I felt like maybe it had never been captured before, just in terms of how it was recorded, and also pushing him to really scream. Because it’s interesting, like his voice has this kind of choir boy aspect to it, but then when he screams, it’s like a little bit of the choir boy is still intact, and I think that’s a special blend of things. He sings in a way like no one else sings. So I kind of felt like it was my role as the producer, to bring that out of him. And I think ‘A 1000 Times’ is probably one of the best examples of that.

The producer also said the next song they plan to release is titled “In A Black Out,” and apparently starts off like Leonard Cohen and ends like Bruce Springsteen.

Listen to “A 1000 Times” below and read Paste’s 2014 feature on Leithauser here.