Premiere: “FREEBIRD” by The Winter Sounds from their forthcoming album “MAXIMUM REALITY”

We’re thrilled to premiere The Winter Sounds’ “FREEBIRD” from their forthcoming album MAXIMUM REALITY, which will be released on New Granada Records. Check it out:

In conjunction with this release, the Nashville-based band is also offering their entire digital discography, which includes unlimited streaming and high-quality downloads of eight releases on Bandcamp, for just $21. Click here to take advantage of that amazing deal.

Even in a world where many bands can claim to defy genres, The Winter Sounds has a particularly hard-to-describe sound. The band has settled on “epic indie new wave dance folk and punk anthems,” but I’m not sure that even covers it. I find the evocative songs full of surprises and emotion.

Just take a listen to these other recently released tracks: “Nineteen” and a cover of the Wrens’ “Boys, You Won’t”.

You can follow The Winter Sounds on Facebook and on Twitter.

We also conducted a short q+a with band founder Patrick Keenan, who shared some background on the band and his thoughts on the forthcoming album. Enjoy.

hissing lawns: The Winter Sounds was founded a decade ago. Can you tell us a little about the band’s backstory and that wonderfully evocative band name?

Patrick Keenan:The name ‘Winter Sounds’ came after the first album (Land of No Output) was recorded. It felt good, seemed to fit the music, so it stuck. We started in 2006. When we first started touring, we’d print MapQuest directions to go from city to city. We’d book shows by day in coffee shops in random cities sometimes a few weeks or even a few nights out, trying to keep going. To find out about gigs, you’d look up a band’s MySpace page and see where they were playing….Indieonthemove.com was not yet a thing.

hl: Has that extensive touring contributed to the band’s longevity in today’s super-competitive market?

PK: I think “longevity” isn’t necessarily the right word for what we’re doing. I just keep doing it, so that’s my strategy. The band kind of lives in obscurity, really, so although I feel creatively dynamic, I am kind of lost as to how to “get the music out there” without touring. We actually haven’t done a lot of touring over the past couple years. The focus has been on the new album. I think, when we were touring a lot, the focus drifted to managing relationships and trying to financially survive. It didn’t make a lot of sense to “live” on the road like that. But it was fun. It took away from time spent writing, but it truly grew our fanbase in a way that can’t be duplicated.

hl: So what can we expect from the forthcoming album?

PK: MAXIMUM REALITY is the fourth full-length from the Winter Sounds, recorded off and on over the past 3 years with our buddy Derek Garten at Prime Recording in Nashville, TN. The album is tender and epic all at the same time. Its definitely a pop album, but I think it will be hard to pin down a more specific genre.

As of my writing this, the album is fully mixed! We are gonna do a special sale on Bandcamp to help with mastering and some remaining production costs. For $21 you can buy nearly everything we’ve recorded including the two new songs “FREEBIRD” and “Nineteen”.