The Walkmen officially announced their hiatus toward the end of 2013, and we published an extensive cover story about the band’s final days. Frontman Hamilton Leithauser has been releasing solo material ever since, and today, he and Walkmen guitarist Paul Maroon announced that they will put out a record together in August titled Dear God. Leithauser included the following statement about the record on the record’s Etsy page:

Hamilton and I are happy to announce our new record, Dear God, a collection of 9 originals and 4 covers.

Come join us, dear listener. Meet Proud Irene as we give her an unsolicited lecture. Stroll down Utica Avenue because we’ve given up on the bus coming. Feel your heart break as Trudy Dies. Drift in and out during Light sleeper. Joylessly pound beers on Dad is Drunk. Fall, once again, for Annie’s transparent bullshit because you’re still loaded from Dad is Drunk on Annie’s gonna sing her song. And that’s just the first side.

The covers on Dear God are by Don Gibson, Will Oldham, Tom Paxton and VF Stewart. As for the originals, Ham and I have been writing songs by exchanging recordings every few days for the past 15 years. Sometimes these come together as songs with a full band. Other times, like two dogs chasing a neighbor’s car, we hopelessly pursue what we liked about the original recordings, never to catch and, I guess, eat it. We often still think of the songs in their original form, as initial musical ideas put down on tape and shuffled back and forth between us. With Dear God, we wanted to make a record of songs the way we initially hear them.

Dear God is being released on vinyl only via our mail-order site. A deluxe version of the record will also be available, which will be the same as the regular version, except hand delivered anywhere in Brooklyn or Washington DC by Hamilton or myself. It’ll be an extra fifteen bucks and we’re not gonna get out of the car. And we won’t have any cash so don’t rob us unless you want a shit ton of Dear God records. Also, at some point almost immediately we will “run out” of deluxe versions. So hurry.

Fondly,

Paul and Ham

Listen to the first single “Proud Irene” below.

Dear God will be released in August. Preorder it on Etsy.