Sunset Rubdown are back. After reuniting last year for their first shows in 14 years, the blog-era indie rock staples teased a new LP over the winter. Today, they’re announcing it, sharing a video for its lead single, and revealing some more North American tour dates.

The always-prolific Krug has stayed active in recent years. He released the solo album Fading Graffiti in 2021, played a bunch of Wolf Parade reunion shows in 2022, and dropped another solo LP called I Just Drew This Knife in 2023. Now we get the first Sunset Rubdown album since 2009’s Dragonslayer.

Always Happy To Explode is coming in September via Krug’s label Pronounced Kroog. It finds him back in action with bandmates Camilla Wynne, Nick Merz, and Jordan Robson-Cramer. The band recorded it at Vancouver studio the Noise Floor with producer Jordan Koop. “Reappearing Rat,” the lead single, is a jaunty acoustic guitar-meets-keyboard pop-rock track that begins with Krug lamenting a certain kind of marred perfection: “Every little thing in the room is perfect/ The pillows look casually thrown but clean/ The curtains are centered lengthwise against the eggshell/ But the rat, the rat, the rat, has reappeared.”

In a press release, he offered this comment on the song: “A kind of irresponsible and lazy surrender to the notion that we’re all just stuck with ourselves, this song is for those times you think ‘Why won’t that person just leave?’, only to realize you’re referring to yourself. For better or worse, we live in our brains. Apparently so does the rat.”

The “Reappearing Rat” video is directed by Derek Janzen and stars Aaron Read. Watch below.

TOUR DATES:
10/10 – Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw Theatre
10/11 – Seattle, WA @ Crocodile
10/12 – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
10/14 – San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo’s
10/15 – Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom
10/16 – Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole
10/18 – Austin, TX @ The Parish
10/19 – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
10/20 – Baton Rouge, LA @ Chelsea’s
10/21 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West
10/22 – Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall
10/23 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat
10/24 – Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church
10/25 – Catskills, NY @ Glen Falls House
10/26 – Northampton, MA @ Iron Horse Music Hall
10/27 – New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
10/29 – Montreal, QC @ La Tulipe
10/30 – Toronto, ON @ Concert Hall

Always Happy To Explode is out 9/20 via Pronounced Kroog. Pre-order it here. Tickets for Sunset Rubdown’s tour go on sale here on 7/12.