Patterson Hood’s last solo album Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance arrived way back in 2012. Today, the Drive-By Truckers co-founder has announced its follow-up Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, arriving in February. The lead single “A Werewolf And A Girl” is out now.

Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams boasts an impressive cast of collaborators including Waxahatchee, Kevin Morby, and Wednesday — the latter of whom are noted DBT fans. “A Werewolf And A Girl,” meanwhile, is a duet with Lydia Loveless. Of the album and the song, Hood says:

You remember it one way, but when you really dip into it, when you really look back, the world was a different place. Things were accepted that wouldn’t be accepted now and things you didn’t understand then make sense now. This record has all these kind of unintended themes. I don’t know if that was anything I set out to do as much as it just kind of worked out that way. You know, there are a lot a lot of happy accidents in this record.

“A Werewolf And A Girl” was written in August of 2021, around 40 years after I fell for my high school sweetheart. The song juxtaposed our falling in love and our breakup a year later. Once I cut the demo, I knew I wanted a woman to sing the choruses from the girl’s point of view. And in my head, it was always going to be Lydia. I mean, I didn’t really even have a second choice. The subject matter’s kind of provocative, so I wouldn’t have wanted to ask somebody that I didn’t feel was a friend. I wouldn’t want someone to be uncomfortable and then just not want to talk to me anymore. What I didn’t count on was that when I asked Lydia if she would be interested in doing it, she actually happened to be in the studio and did it the next day. And that’s what’s on the record.

Listen to the single and see the full album tracklist below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Exploding Trees”
02 “A Werewolf And A Girl” (Feat. Lydia Loveless)
03 “The Forks of Cypress” (Feat. Waxahatchee)
04 “Miss Coldiron’s Oldsmobile”
05 “The Pool House”
06 “The Van Pelt Parties” (Feat. Wednesday)
07 “Last Hope”
08 “At Safe Distance”
09 “Airplane Screams”
10 “Pinocchio”

Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams is out 2/21 via ATO.