Last month, Toronto indie rock duo Ducks Ltd. shared “The Main Thing.” Today, they’re announcing their sophomore album Harm’s Way and releasing “Hollowed Out,” which has backing vocals from Ratboys’ Julia Steiner and Marcus Nuccio (also on drums), Dehd’s Jason Balla, and Moontype’s Margaret McCarthy, plus strings arranged and performed by Finom’s Macie Stewart.

On Harm’s Way, Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis worked with producer Dave Vettraino, as well as many guests: Stewart (violin, string arrangements); Nuccio (drums on most tracks); Balla (who helped arrange and perform backing vocals); and backing vocals from Steiner, Nathan O’Dell of Dummy, McCarthy, Rui De Magalhaes of Lawn, and Lindsey-Paige McCloy of Patio. The band’s touring drummer Jonathan Pappo and bassist Julia Wittman also makes appearances.

Read what McGreevy said about “Hollowed Out” in a statement:

There was a sinkhole that opened up on Dundas West a little while ago, in an area near to where I live. It shut down the road for a month. It had a strange resonance, partly because a lot of the streets in Toronto used to be rivers and streams running down to the lake that roads were then built over. It felt like an encroachment of nature into an urban environment–the river coming back to collapse a piece of civic infrastructure, and I built the song around the feeling that evoked. It’s about living with decline. About the feeling that the horizon of possibility in the world is forever being drawn in to align with the edges of the imaginations of a small group of careless rich people. And about existing through a state of ongoing catastrophe over which we have no control.

Hear it below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Hollowed Out”
02 “Cathedral City”
03 “The Main Thing”
04 “Train Full Of Gasoline”
05 “Deleted Scenes”
06 “On Our Way To The Rave”
07 “A Girl, Running”
08 “Harm’s Way”
09 “Heavy Bag”

TOUR DATES:
12/02 – Queens, NY @ TV Eye*
02/08 – Toronto, ON @ Sonic Boom#
02/10 – Montreal, QC @ Taverne Tour Festival
05/27 – London, UK @ Moth Club
* with The Ophelias & Golden Apples
# with Only God Forgives & Cootie Catcher

Harm’s Way is out 2/9 on Carpark.