After a couple searching early years, Westerman’s career had something of a flashpoint moment in early 2018. That’s when he released “Confirmation,” a stunning and transfixing song that didn’t sound quite like anything anybody else was doing at the moment. (It was also one of the best songs of the decade.) We soon named the English songwriter an Artist To Watch, and everything he released after seemed to reiterate that he was a unique, special musician — songs like “Albatross” and “Easy Money” further fleshing out his space-age, synthetic folk-pop. And earlier this year, we learned that we’d finally be getting a larger work from Westerman: his debut album, Your Hero Is Not Dead.

Out this week, Your Hero Is Not Dead is an album that makes good on all the promise of those early Westerman singles. It’s an album often concerned with abstract moral quandaries and musings, but with a glimmering beauty that keeps it from simply becoming cerebral. In fact, the whole album is a sort of resolution of various conflicts. High-minded theories and abstract visions balanced with deeply human emotion, electronic and organic sounds mutating as synths glow like embers and Westerman’s voice takes on a digital sheen, a melancholic rainy-day atmosphere with all kinds of sounds that become transporting and euphoric. Westerman emerged as an elusive songwriter hard to tie to any story or time or sound, and Your Hero Is Not Dead refines and expands his aesthetic and his viewpoint.

Normally, Westerman might be on the road promoting his album; normally, we might’ve crossed paths someplace and done an interview. But the pandemic rearranged everyone’s lives this year. With Westerman at home in London, and with me at home filling quarantine time with activities like “play guitar for the first time in years,” we decided to do something a little different. Ahead of Your Hero Is Not Dead arriving this week, Westerman and I got on Zoom so he could teach me to play “Blue Comanche,” one of the best songs on the album. Check out our guitar lesson below, and teach yourself how to play “Blue Comanche” as well if you want.

Your Hero Is Not Dead is out 6/5 via Partisan. Pre-order it here.