Over this past pandemic-addled year, Will Oldham — the eccentric Louisville singer-songwriter known as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy — has continued busily collaborating with his musician friends. He finished up his new Superwolves album with Matt Sweeney. He released a seemingly endless series of covers with fellow Drag City OG Bill Callahan and an assortment of their pals. And it appears he has completed an EP with folk guitarist and archivist Nathan Salsburg and writer Max Porter.

That EP, titled Three Feral Pieces, is out today for purchase on 12″ vinyl. There’s a run of 250 with handmade cover art plus 700 copies of the standard edition. As No Quarter Records explains, “Both come with letter pressed inserts, featuring art by Max, Nathan and Bonnie, and have an etching on Side B (by Louisville artist Oscar Parsons).” One of the EP’s songs is streaming today, too, a translucent acoustic ballad called “Here Song.” Here is the project’s official origin story:

In the strange uneasy year of 2020, English writer Max Porter started sending Kentucky guitarist Nathan Salsburg scraps of “feral” text. Unfixed things. Abstract fragments beyond the literal plain, incantations and half-spells, burrowing into the language of decay and growth, weirding and wilding, departure and return. Salsburg dug into scoring them, inviting near-neighbor Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy to contribute to their musical translation, which he did through singing and his own guitar playing. Three Feral Pieces is the outcome of their satellite collaboration: composite chants/yearning rites/spring gifts/field notes/anthropocene love spells.

Three Feral Pieces is a gathering of old friends and longtime collaborators. Oldham and Salsburg released an untitled EP together in 2017. Salsburg and Porter assisted with “Bed In The River,” a truly sublime single by Joan Shelley, who plays Wurlitzer on this EP. So, yeah, it’s a family affair.

Stream “Here Song” below.

Three Feral Pieces is out now on No Quarter. Purchase it here.