Joyero Shares New Song “Steepest Stairs” from This Month’s New Album Release the Dogs

Joyero is the new musical moniker of Andy Stack, better known for his work drumming in the band Wye Oak. He’s got a new album coming out later this month, and we’ve already heard the great “Dogs” from the record. Today (Aug. 5), Stack is sharing the new single “Steepest Stairs.”

The track shimmers with beautiful synths and jittery drums. Underscored by bursts of thumping bass notes and additional layers of metronomic percussion, the track is propulsive but luxuriant in its five-minute runtime. “Steeping Stairs” finds Stack rolling with the punches, singing to an unnamed partner, “Come down the stairs / And meet me here / Darling, I got your message / Loud and clear.”

In a tweet, Stack writes that the song is “about getting knocked down, beat up, swept away in the chaos that surrounds us, but finding some kind of peace amongst all of the rubble. Like, you’ve just had the shit kicked out of you, but there are some beautiful blues and purples in the bruising.”

“Steepest Stairs” comes paired with a self-directed music video that has Stack running on a country road in the middle of western Texas. Shot simply in golden-hour lighting and utilizing some glitching editing techniques, the video is a breezy watch; Stack explains in a statement that it’s “about feeling like an outsider, and finding some peace in that.”

Release the Dogs is out Aug. 23 via Merge Records. You can watch the video for “Steepest Stairs” below, then head here to revisit lead single “Dogs,” and find all the inbound album’s details and Joyero’s upcoming tour dates. Keep scrolling and you’ll find a 2010 Wye Oak performance dug up from the Paste archives.