Kendall Street Company share Don't Wanna Be Gone from a new album

Kendall Street Company have announced a new album called Yodeling Astroman, arriving October 23 through Gitcha Records, and released its lead single, Don't Wanna Be Gone.

The band, from Charlottesville, Virginia, reunited with the producer Scott Gordon, whose credits include Ringo Starr and Alanis Morissette, to co-produce what is their eighth studio album. It runs to 15 tracks.

The record is a concept album with an odd premise. Its songs are folk tales written from the perspective of the Yodeling Astroman, a figure the band say materialised in deep space shortly after the Big Bang and found Earth by accident, then became interested in how humans manage to love and hate, build and destroy.

Don't Wanna Be Gone is the second song in the running order. Frontman Louis Smith said it started as a look at life on the road before widening out. "It's a song about wanting to stay in the present moment despite everything happening all the time," he said.

He listed the inputs without much order: the Asheville floods, the California wildfires, Mad Max: Fury Road, Paul Simon and the ups and downs of touring. The finished song touches on lost love, climate change, substance abuse, displacement, mindfulness and anxiety, and Smith said he wrestled with it for a while before he was happy with where it landed.

The rest of the tracklist runs from Last Night I Dreamed through Hoyt & Horn, 16oz World, The Gambler and Lord Von Rubin to the title track and Get Along Now lil' Doggie, which closes it.

The single is on the release calendar ahead of the October album date. The band work the improvisational rock and indie circuit, where Aqueous reuniting for its first shows since 2023 has been one of the year's bigger stories.