It’s Wednesday yet again, which means it’s only right for North Carolina indie–rock favorites Wednesday to drop a new song, “Wound Up Here (By Holdin On),” and announce their next album, Bleeds, will be out Sept. 19 via Dead Oceans.
Following the breezy alt-country single, “Elderberry Wine,” “Wound Up Here” highlights Wednesday’s heavier alt-rock side with moody, atmospheric verses building into big riff choruses. In a statement, Karly Hartzman said the song was inspired by a story a friend told her about the time he “had to pull a body out of a creek in West Virginia. Someone had drowned but they took a few days to resurface because of the current.”
The accompanying lyrics are appropriately eerie and unsettling, but with a touch of dull realism. “Found him drowned in the creek,” Hartzman sings on the first verse. “Face was puffy/They hung his dirty jersey up in a trophy case/Next to his girlfriend in a picture with a varsity face.”
As for the song’s chorus — “I wound up here by holdin on” — Hartzman said she borrowed the line from a piece in her friend Evan Gray’s poetry book, Thickets Swamped in Fence-Coated Briars. “[T]hat line stuck out to me as pure genius so I stole it and wrote the rest of the song in my own words around it,” she said.
Both “Wound Up Here” and “Elderberry Wine” are set to appear on Bleeds, which follows Wednesday’s acclaimed 2023 album, Rat Saw God. The album was recorded at Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios, with longtime producer Alex Farrar at the helm again. Hartzman recorded the LP with bandmates Xandy Chelmis, Alan Miller, Ethan Baechtold, and Jake “MJ” Lenderman. (Though he plays on the record, Lenderman will no longer be touring with Wednesday.)
Wednesday will hit the road in support of Bleeds this fall, with the run kicking off Oct. 9 in Santa Fe and wrapping Nov. 21 in Washington D.C. Tickets are on sale now, with full info available on the band’s website.
Bleeds Track List
1. “Reality TV Argument Bleeds”
2. “Townies”
3. “Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)”
4. “Elderberry Wine”
5. “Phish Pepsi”
6. “Candy Breath”
7. “The Way Love Goes”
8. “Pick Up That Knife”
9. “Wasp”
10. “Bitter Everyday”
11. “Carolina Murder Suicide”
12. “Gary’s II”
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