The Walkmen have now been on hiatus since the end of 2013. Since then, the band’s individual members have been busy with other endeavors. Frontman Hamilton Leithauser released his latest solo album, The Loves Of Your Life, a little under a year ago. Walt Martin has had a slew of his own solo outings, and he teams up with other indie luminaries from time to time, particularly his buddy Matt Berninger. (He was involved in Berninger’s album Serpentine Prison last fall.) In November, Paul Maroon unveiled a collection of instrumental music. And Matt Barrick pops up from time to time, touring with Fleet Foxes or in the indie super-trio Muzz.

Comparatively, Peter Matthew Bauer has been a little less visible in recent times. He has two great solo albums of his own, 2014’s Liberation! and 2017’s Mount Qaf. But even though he’d used the phrase “Pete And The Quitters” in the past, the fact that he popped up for a livestream under the moniker last year seemed kinda telling. In the last couple years, Bauer was busy with managing artists. It wasn’t exactly clear if he was planning to do another album himself or not.

Well, that’s about to change: Bauer’s reportedly planning a single series leading up to a new album. Today, we get to hear the first of those, “Mountains On Mountains.” It’s something Bauer premiered last year for an election fundraiser, and then went back and fleshed out into a finished song. “This is the first track of my own that I’ve recorded and decided to release in a long time,” Bauer told BrooklynVegan. “I’m not entirely sure how to explain it: It’s a pretty dark song about certain types of people and memories fading away. But it also has this feeling of no expectations, so it leaves me with a sense of optimism and presence in the end.” If you like Bauer’s other solo work, you’ll like this. Check it out below.