Earlier this year, Kevin Devine announced his ninth album, Instigator, with “No History,” and today he’s shared the title track. It’s about the creative process and how writing songs can serve as the catalyst to re-evaluating and repositioning your life, and it places that thought against a hook that doesn’t take that heady idea too seriously.

“’Instigator’ started off as a few lines about songwriting, or mine in particular, and became a kind of mission statement about making sense of yourself and your relationships at least partially through the exercise,” Devine explained to Consequence Of Sound, who debuted the track. “It was early in the process of putting the album together, at home last summer, kicking things around, and those easy, open-strummed power chords kinda tumbled into that first verse, tongue-in-cheek, kind of self-admonishing in playful way, and it all just kind of kept tumbling into the chorus.” Listen below.

Instigator is out 10/21 via Procrastinate! Music Traitors/Triple Crown Records. Pre-order it here.