Wild Pink Duet with Julien Baker on “Hold My Hand”

Wild Pink are back with another preview of their forthcoming fourth full-length ILYSM, coming Oct. 14 on Royal Mountain Records. The album’s tender, twangy second single “Hold My Hand,” featuring Julien Baker, was inspired by an experience Wild Pink bandleader John Ross had while battling cancer—an ordeal the band reckon with at length on the follow-up to their acclaimed 2021 LP A Billion Little Lights.

“I wrote that song right after my first surgery, about lying on the operating table where a member of the surgical team held my hand right before I went under,” Ross recalls of the heartfelt “Hold My Hand” in a statement. “It sounds kind of arbitrary, and like it shouldn’t have been as impactful as it was, but I felt very comforted and wanted to capture that loving feeling in the song.”

He continues:

I knew pretty quickly that I wanted it to be a duet, and I’m super grateful to Julien for joining me on it. This was one of the first songs we rehearsed together as a band in the studio and David [Moore]’s piano part felt great almost immediately. There were a couple moments like that in the recording process where a song just immediately fell into place as soon as we started playing it.

The finished product is a quiet storm of emotion, with Moore’s arpeggiated piano figure and Dan Keegan’s brushed drums as its slow, but steady heartbeat. Ross strums an acoustic guitar and sings at just above a whisper, wondering, “Wherever I go when I go down / Will you be there when I come around again?” It’s only then that Baker joins her voice to his (on “To hold my hand”), a musical representation of the simple, but beautiful act of human togetherness that saw Ross through such fraught uncertainty. Moore’s piano and sustained lap steel eventually come to the forefront, like morning’s first rays of sunshine.

“Hold My Hand” follows ILYSM’s title track, released alongside the album’s announcement in late July, which Paste hailed among the best songs of its release week.

Below, you’ll find the “Hold My Hand” visualizer (dir. @strangeprocess), Wild Pink’s 2018 Daytrotter session and Baker’s 2016 Paste Studio session, as well as the band’s upcoming tour dates.

Wild Pink Tour Dates:

October
12 – Boston, MA @ The Middle East (Upstairs) *
13 – Portland, ME @ Sun Tiki Studios *
14 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Made *
15 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brendas *
16 – Washington, DC @DC9*
17 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Spirit Hall*
18 – Toronto, ON @ The Drake*
20 – Montreal, QC @ L’escogriffe*
21 – Burlington, VT @ Foam Brewery*

November
08 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
09 – Brighton, UK @ The Hope & Ruin
10 – Bristol, UK @ The Exchange
11 – London, UK @ Pitchfork London
12 – Manchester, UK @ Yes Basement
13 – Glasgow, UK @ The Hug & Pint
14 – Dublin, IE @ The Workmans Cellar
16 – Paris, FR @ Supersonic
17 – Luzern, CH @ Schuur
18 – Prague, CZ @ Cafe V Lese
19 – Berlin, DE @ Marie Antoinette
20 – Copenhagen, DK @ Rahuset
21 – Hamburg, DE @ Aalhaus
22 – Munster, DE @ Pension Schmidt
25 – Kingston, NY @ Tubby’s*
26 – Syracuse, NY @ Funk N Waffles*
27 – Detroit, MI @ Loving Touch*
28 – Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village*
29 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7Th Street*

December
01 – Denver, CO @ Globe Hall*
02 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court*
03 – Boise, ID @ The Shredder*
04 – Spokane, WA @ Lucky You Lounge*
05 – Seattle, WA @ Barboza*
07 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios*
09 – San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill*
10 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Airliner*
11 – San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar*
12 – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar*
14 – Austin, TX @ Mohawk*
15 – Dallas, TX @ Three Links*
17 – Nashville, TN @ The Basement*

(* w/ Trace Mountains)