No good deed goes unpunished, right? Two years ago, Box of Stars, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting mental health through music, launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund a Sparklehorse/Mark Linkous tribute album called Last Box Of Sparklers. The campaign was met with much excitement and raised more than $46,000. It was set to include contributions from artists like Mark Lanegan, Flaming Lips, Dinosaur Jr., Phantogram, Mercury Rev, the Joy Formidable, Califone, and Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle. But now, Box Of Stars has sent out a letter saying that not only has the project been cancelled, but supporters will not be reimbursed. Here’s what Box Of Stars wrote:

The estate of Mark Linkous decided that it will not support the project and has threatened legal action if we continue. Our silence on this matter has been neither willing nor willful, and it has been extraordinarily difficult to remain quiet while receiving the comments and reading the speculations that have understandably arisen in the past several weeks. For a variety of reasons, we believe it best not to release the album without the support of the Linkous estate.

But the funds collected were already spent on producing the album, so there’s no way for the organization to refund supporters, either. Will we ever hear the songs? The organization is hopeful they will be released in an alternative manner someday:

While we sincerely hope that these recordings will see the light of day at some point in the future, we can’t promise that, and it will not be in the form of the tribute album we originally planned.

And they are working on alternative items to send out to contributors:

So, what can we do? We can and will offer future projects to you for your support, with perks over and above the value of each original individual contribution. We are also working on a new T-shirt/hoodie design that we can eventually deliver in replacement for the ML designed ones. Please understand that we are not able to publicly discuss this project any further, and any correspondence should be emailed directly to us at info@boxofstars.org.

Previously, Box Of Stars had shared tracks for the project from the Flaming Lips and Joy Formidable on their Soundcloud page, but that page is now wiped clean.

You can read the full letter here.