The Sonder Bombs are back with a new single, “The Star,” the Cleveland band’s first track since Clothbound, their second full-length album that came out at the very beginning of 2021. “The Star” starts off languid and dreamy before breaking out into a fuzzily satisfying hook. “I wrote this song almost in a panic. It sprang from me,” the band’s Willow Hawks said in a statement, continuing:

The past year, I’ve been struggling pretty severely with my mental health and so it came from being completely submerged in that pain for long periods at a time. I was getting to a point where I wasn’t sure I wanted to be here or if it would ever get better. In the past, I’ve used music and art to move through these moments. More recently my relationship with music has been pretty complicated. On one hand, its an incredibly beautiful and rewarding and comforting way to process my emotions. I get to travel with my friends and play shows. I have community. It is a gift. On the other hand, I have severe mental illness working against me & there’s so much self doubt that goes into everything I make. After our second record, I felt like such an abject failure & I definitely didn’t feel like I deserved to pursue the dream anymore. Like I had wasted my opportunity & potential. For me, “The Star” represents a guiding sense of hope that pulled me out of the darkest and deepest parts of myself. It took making this song to realize that for me, the guiding force is music.

Listen below.

“The Star” is out now via Take This To Heart Records.