Grumpy release "The Whale" from the album Unfindable Ring

Grumpy have released "The Whale", the second single from Unfindable Ring, the album the New York indie rock band put out on 23 October through Bayonet Records.

The song is a co-write. Vocalist Heaven Schmitt wrote it with guitarist Diego Clare, who records as D.A. Crimson and also directed the video that came with it, making this the most collaborative thing the band have released so far.

"Diego, my bandmate, is the greatest songwriter I know," Schmitt said, describing the collaboration as the only way to avoid dying of jealousy over Clare's artistry, and crediting Clare with pushing them out of true-to-life storytelling and into invented fiction.

The subject matter came out of shared frustration. Schmitt describes the two of them falling into co-misery about the music industry and whether they will make it, and the song answering that with the belief their time will come, that the bigger acts will move up a rung and leave room behind them.

Clare's account starts in a different place. What began as a handful of punchlines turned into something more earnest about the sense that nothing ever gives, that one step forward costs two back, and about deciding to be the arbiter of your own value in spite of it rather than because things have improved.

"The Whale" follows "OBL", the album's lead single, and "Twenty Five" before it. It arrives after the band announced Unfindable Ring for 23 October, sits in the indie and rock territory the record occupies, and the release is logged on the release calendar.