Nick Zanca, the NYC-based artist who has put out music as Mister Lies and one-half of Quiet Friend over the years, has announced a new album, Hindsight, which will be out in August. It’s the second album he’s put out under his own name following 2021’s Cacerolazo, which was built around field recordings; he’s describing this one as his first singer-songwriter album, or “the record I have been waiting to make ever since I started making them.”

Hindsight has an impressive list of contributors: Wendy Eisenberg, Nadia Hulett, Mari Maurice (aka More Eaze), Ben Chapoteau-Katz, Steven Rogers, Lexi Bodick, and Sarah Galdes. Today, Zanca is sharing the album’s lead single, “Little Professor,” a smooth and surging track with a theatrical flair that finds Zanca in pithy reflection: “Little professor, he will stick to his own schedule; honest to a fault with an eye for the essential.”

“As someone who received an Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis as a child at the turn of the millennium, I witnessed firsthand the haphazard cultural stance, crooked pedagogy, and alienating language that was used to engage with children on the spectrum,” Zanca shared in a statement. “This song is not only an attempt to offer up a more constructive alternative to how all that could have looked, but a middle-finger refutation of those attitudes that could allow a kid to see anything for themself other than their full potential.”

Watch a video for it directed by Hunter Adams and Carl Elsaesser below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Not An Artist (BGM)”
02 “Screen Test”
03 “Little Professor”
04 “Debt We Pay”
05 “You Two”
06 “Hindsight”
07 “Softshoe”
08 “The Party Stops (WIP)”

Hindsight is out 8/2 via American Dreams. Pre-order it here.