For their new album, the Decemberists are looking beyond bookish folk-rock. I’ll Be Your Girl, their first LP since 2015’s What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World, finds the indie veterans working with indie superproducer John Congleton for the first time, and he helped them chase a whole different sound.

“We were talking about music and our references,” Colin Meloy says in a press release. “It kept coming back to Roxy Music and early glam, and we dove in with that in mind. The Decemberists are a record-collectors’ band, we’re all fans and scholars of music, so there a lot of touch points that we all get, but they don’t always come through. So we were trying to embrace that Bryan Ferry aspect, that kind of set the tone.”

Lead single “Severed” was originally written as a punk song, but “wasn’t really working,” Meloy explains. “Jenny set this arpeggio throughout it, and it became like an early New Order song. And I had forgotten that when we made the demo, I also started a file to turn it into more of a Depeche Mode song — I actually wanted it to be a synth song all along.” Listen below.

I’ll Be Your Girl tracklist:

01 “Once In My Life”
02 “Cutting Stone”
03 “Severed”
04 “Starwatcher”
05 “Tripping Along”
06 “Your Ghost”
07 “Everything Is Awful”
08 “Sucker’s Prayer”
09 “We All Die Young”
10 “Rusalka, Rusalka / The Wild Rushes”
11 “I’ll Be Your Girl”

Tour dates:

03/22 Fox Theater @ Pomona, CA
03/23 Arlington Theatre @ Santa Barbara, CA
03/24 Innings Festival @ Tempe, AZ
04/06 Palace Theatre @ St. Paul, MN
04/08Riverside Theater @ Milwaukee, WI
04/10 Chicago Theatre @ Chicago, IL
04/13-14 Ryman Auditorium @ Nashville, TN
04/15 Coca-Cola Roxy Theatre @ Atlanta, GA
04/16 North Charleston Performing Arts Center @ Charleston, SC
04/18 Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre @ Charlotte, NC
04/19 Durham Performing Arts Center @ Durham, NC
04/20 The National @ Richmond, VA
04/21 The Anthem @ Washington, DC
04/23 Smith Opera House @ Geneva, NY
04/24 Agora Theatre @ Cleveland, OH
04/25 Peabody Opera House @ St. Louis, MO
05/22 Red Rocks Amphitheatre @ Morrison, CO +
05/23 Uptown Theater @ Kansas City, MO
05/25 Hill Auditorium @ Ann Arbor, MI
05/26 Artpark @ Lewiston, NY
05/27 Boston Calling Festival @ Boston, MA
05/28 MTELUS @ Montreal, QC
05/30 Sony Centre for the Performing Arts @ Toronto, ON
05/31 Benedum Center @ Pittsburgh, PA
06/02 Murat Theatre at Old National Centre @ Indianapolis, IN
06/05 Iroquois Amphitheater @ Louisville, KY
06/07 Mann Center for the Performing Arts @ Philadelphia, PA ^
06/08 College Street Music Hall @ New Haven, CT ^
06/09 The Green at Shelburne Museum @ Shelburne, VT ^
06/10 State Theatre @ Portland, ME ^
06/13 BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival at Prospect Park Bandshell @ Brooklyn, NY ^
06/15 MASS MoCA @ North Adams, MA
06/21 Paramount Theatre @ Seattle, WA ^
06/22-23 – Edgefield @ Troutdale, OR ^
08/04-05 Travelers’ Rest @ Missoula, MT

^ with M. Ward
+ with Whitney

I’ll Be Your Girl is out 3/16 on Capitol Records.

CREDIT: Holly Andres