Jeff Rosenstock never announces albums ahead of time. Traditionally, the guy just drops completed works in our lap by surprise, like 2018’s Post- and 2020’s No Dream and its 2021 companion piece Ska Dream. But times are changing. Look at TV, an industry Rosenstock knows something about: More and more series are abandoning the full-season drop in favor of an old-school weekly release, so much so that it feels weird that a whole new season of The Bear just appeared on Hulu this month. But I digress. A new Jeff Rosenstock album is coming — just not today.

On Sept. 1, Rosenstock will release HELLMODE through Polyvinyl. It includes his recent single “Liked U Better” as well as “Doubt,” the new song out today. In a press release, Rosenstock says, “To me, the album feels like the chaos of being alive right now. We’re experiencing all these things at the same time that trigger our senses, and emotions that make us feel terrible. We’re just feeling way too much all at once!”

“Doubt” builds from understated calm to some of Rosenstock’s trademark shout-along anxious euphoria, culminating in the refrain “Slow motion breakdown!” Its animated video is by some of his friends from Craig Of The Creek, the Cartoon Network series for which he does the music. A statement from yr boi:

I wanted to make an anime-inspired video that captures the feeling of dread you feel when you know you’re gonna have to deal with some bad shit, and then that bad shit ends up way worse than you had even imagined. I’ve also always wanted to make a video with some of the ridiculously talented artists at Craig Of The Creek. We met up at Tony’s Darts Away in Burbank – which I feel obliged to shout out because they didn’t kick us out even though five of us sat outside there for about 3 hours and ordered one pretzel and one coffee in total. Everyone started throwing ideas around and pretty quickly, Najja, Dashawn & Deena started sketching out their storyboards right there at the bar. Soon enough a tiny animation pipeline was formed with Cory and Jon and poof boom bang uh-oh video happened. It was pretty incredible to see it all come together!

Watch the “Doubt” video below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “WILL U STILL U”
02 “HEAD”
03 “LIKED U BETTER”
04 “DOUBT”
05 “FUTURE IS DUMB”
06 “SOFT LIVING”
07 “HEALMODE”
08 “LIFE ADMIN”
09 “I WANNA BE WRONG”
10 “GRAVEYARD SONG”
11 “3 SUMMERS”

HELLMODE is out 9/1 via Polyvinyl.