North Carolina trio Museum Mouth recently attracted the attention of Say Anything’s Max Bemis, who snapped them up to his Rory Records roster. And, while a new full-length is expected from them some time down the line, for now they’ve got a one-off 7-inch coming up called Most Likely To Be Conflicted, featuring two new songs: “One Cusp” and “Melvin,” the latter of which they’ve shared today. And whereas their last album, Alex I Am Nothing, pined over a romantic impossibility in 40 heart-wrenching minutes, the new track distills the pain down to just three. Songwriter and vocalist Karl Kuehn starts at the beginning: “You were tall when we first met,” but quickly fast-forwards to the end — those are the two most important markers for any relationship, after all. “Now you’ve got me ’round your neck/ You said, ‘It’s cool and I don’t mind’/ But we both knew that things weren’t fine.” Kuehn wishes the titular Melvin the best and warbles that he’ll be fine at the end of the song, but his terseness betrays uncertainty. This is what Museum Mouth do best — they take tiny fragments of emotion that get lodged in your throat and vocalize them. Listen below.

(via The Runout)

Most Likely To Be Conflicted will be available on 7/24 in a limited-edition run of 30 picture discs via Pocket Cat Records. Downloads will be available on their Bandcamp on the same day.