Wild Pink - Still Coming Down

Out today, August 21, 2026. Wild Pink's sixth album was cut in a single week at Drop of Sun in Asheville with Alex Farrar producing, the fastest the band has ever worked, and not coincidentally the most relaxed they have ever sounded. Farrar's fingerprints are all over the current run of great Southern indie records (Wednesday, Bnny, Samia), and putting John Ross in that room turned out to be the right call.

Ross writes in a heartland-indie register that gets him compared to Springsteen and The War On Drugs, but the details have always been stranger and more specific than that shorthand allows. He builds songs like short fiction, gathering passersby, invented figures, and odd corners of American history into something cinematic and slightly warped. "Round Of Applause At The End Of The World" is steely and shredded, aimed squarely at the whirlpool of conspiracy and misinformation that can swallow a whole community, and it ends mid-thought like an argument you cannot win. "Box Store" carries just as much weight. "Plates Keep Spinning" and "500 Is The New 250" are where the humor slips in. MJ Lenderman plays guitar, Meg Duffy of Hand Habits and Xandy Chelmis of Wednesday both turn up, and longtime drummer Dan Keegan holds it down, which tells you exactly which corner of American guitar music this record lives in.

It follows 2024's Dulling The Horns, which landed on year-end lists across the board and pushed the band onto bigger stages alongside Dr. Dog, Crumb, and Lenderman himself. Still Coming Down is what happens after that ride: a record about settling into life on the road, written by someone widely regarded as one of the best lyricists working in indie rock.

Midnight blue vinyl on Fire Talk. New this week, and it will not sit long.