Modern Baseball have been on indefinite hiatus for the past five years, and former frontman Jake Ewald has kept himself busy with his project Slaughter Beach, Dog. A little more than a year ago, Slaughter Beach, Dog released the surprise album At The Moonbase, and they followed it with a cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You.” The project has been quiet since then, but with a tour coming up, Slaughter Beach, Dog have teamed with two tourmates for a touching new single.

“Just Like Me” is a love song. At first, I heard it as a father singing to a kid, but now I’m not so sure. It’s more likely that “Just Like Me” is a relationship song about two people who have been together long enough to adapt each other’s mannerisms: “Say we aren’t the same, I just laugh/ ‘Cause you look just like me when you get mad.” Jake Ewald sings the song as a duet with former Chumped leader Anika Pyle. It’s a soft, delicate countrified ballad, and it’s very pretty.

Pyle is about to head out on tour with Slaughter Beach, Dog. The tour will also feature Trace Mountains, the project led by former LVL UP leader Dave Benton. On “Just Like Me,” Benton plays keyboards. It’s cool to hear the veterans of the ’10s DIY world getting together on something like this, and I bet “Just Like Me” will sound really cool when they play it live. In a press release, Ewald says how the song came into being:

Every few years, I get curious about writing songs for other people. Some time before the pandemic, in response to a writing prompt from our publisher, I wrote the first verse and chorus of “Just Like Me.” I remember piecing the words together while vacuuming corn chips out of the van after a tour, and I liked how disarming the first line felt. I forgot about the song until last year, getting ready for our first shows back. I woke up on the studio couch one morning before band practice and quickly jotted down a second verse and chorus, then filed it away again.

A few months ago, Anika Pyle called me and suggested that she, Dave Benton (of Trace Mountains), and I should work on something collaborative to coincide with our tour. We all jumped at the idea — I sent over my unfinished demo of “Just Like Me,” Dave replied with a melody and a chord progression for a bridge, and pretty soon Anika and I were hunched over our notepads at the Metal Shop fleshing out the rest of the lyrics.

Listen to the song below.

“Just Like Me” is out now on Lame-O Records, and you can get it at Bandcamp.