Pop. 1280’s last album was 2016’s Paradise, and today the New York band are announcing their fourth full-length, Way Station, which will be out the first week of December. The album started coming together back before Paradise was announced when they found out that drummer Andrew Chugg was leaving the band. A short time after that, synth player Allegra Sauvage also left the group. “People get to move on in their lives with no ill will harbored, but we were left suddenly alone on the shore of a strange island,” the band said in a press release.

Today, they’re sharing the album’s lead single, “Under Duress,” a nervy and oppressive growl, and had this say about it:

‘Under Duress’ started out as just a drumbeat that sounded like it had a song inside of it.  We layered synthesizers and samples onto it and took it into the studio.  There was an upright piano there, and spontaneously we decided to play that on the intro and throughout the song and it affected the mood incredibly.  The swells of analog synth and samples that bounce off each other like waves after the choruses really affect us and are very satisfying to play live.
  
Lyrically, this song is very open to interpretation, but it’s about losing people to death, empathy for them and for the other people who were close to them.  It’s also about our inability to fully know another person’s experience and the frustration, comfort, guilt, and hopelessness that this can create. This feeling can even extend to how humans seem to look at huge issues that affect all of us. There’s hurting and empathy, but then a feeling of hopelessness and an inability to grasp the vastness of our problems.  The car crash in the song was a real event, but stands as a symbol for that moment that changes everything, and we show up on the scene later to try to figure out what happened and how to move forward.

Listen below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Boom Operator”
02 “Under Duress”
03 “The Convoy”
04 “Doves”
05 “Hospice”
06 “Monument”
07 “Empathetics”
08 “Leading The Spider On”
09 “The Deserter”
10 “Home Sweet Hole”
11 “Secret Rendezvous”

TOUR DATES:
12/12 Montreal, QC @ Esco w/ Scattered Clouds
12/13 Toronto, ON @ Baby G w/ Whimm
12/14 Ottawa, ON @ Cinqhole w/ Scattered Clouds
12/16 Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
12/17 Pittsburgh, PA @ Collision
12/18 Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool RECORD RELEASE SHOW w/ Whimm, Cube

Way Station is out 12/6 via Weyrd Son Records. Pre-order it here.