Media Release: Sylvan Esso trust fall into dystopia on Ow ∞, their first new album in four years out now via Psychic Hotline + new video for ‘Sledge’

Sylvan Esso release Ow ∞, their first new album in four years, and the first to be released on their own record label, Psychic Hotline. Named one of the buzziest new releases by The New York Times, Ow ∞ is a trust fall into our dystopian present, past and future – arms wide open, embracing and absorbing the pain of cities under water or on fire, and piecing oneself back together as a tactile, scotch-taped collage of memories, ephemera, Y2K-era burned CDs and backseat makeouts.

Ow ∞ is further illustrated through an immersive world of animated characters and iconography by artist Eric Timothy Carlson. Focus track ‘Sledge‘ was written in the shadow of Hurricane Helene and the Los Angeles fires, channelling apocalyptic anxiety into a fierce affirmation of destruction, control and surrender.

Produced by Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn and bringing together 12 of their most collaborative, improvisational and experimental songs to date, Ow ∞ marks the longest the band has ever spent writing a record, but arrives with an intense immediacy that is messy, hellish and free, metabolising a life of making music with people into making art that you just love.

Created, reimagined and revisited nearly every day since 2022, in the woods of their studio Betty’s in Chapel Hill, NC, Ow ∞ is both a technicolour totem of personal destruction and an ecstatic invitation to party. From highlights like ‘Hot Slob‘ to ‘Concrete Glen’ and ‘On & On‘, most of the tracks on Ow ∞ are Meath’s first vocal takes, while arrangements and ideas are excavated, painted over and held together by the largest community of musicians Sylvan Esso have ever worked with on an LP. Featuring six different drummers in total, as well as live guitar, bass, keys, vibraphone, woodwinds, Innato, organ, piano and electronics, Meath and Sanborn are joined by Daniel Aged (Frank Ocean, Dijon), BJ Burton (Bon Iver, Charli XCX), Matt Douglas (the Mountain Goats), Glenn Kotche (Wilco), Jake Luppen (Hippo Campus, Samia), TJ Maiani (Weyes Blood, Neneh Cherry), James Mapley-Brittle (GRRL), Buddy Ross (Frank Ocean, Bon Iver), Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes) and Joe Westerlund (Megafaun) throughout the record, filling hard drives with 5-10 songs at a time, some sticking and some not.

But for an album that wrestles so much with the out-of-control nature of being alive, Ow ∞ meets Meath and Sanborn at a time when, finally, they have complete control over what Sylvan Esso can be: putting things out the way they want to, with the people they choose, in their own studio and through their own label.

Their history includes GRAMMY® nominations, four acclaimed LPs, nearly a billion streams and wide-ranging collaborations with everyone from Arooj Aftab to Maggie Rogers, Tyler Childers, Reyna Tropical, Remi Wolf, Moses Sumney, The Postal Service, Rostam and more. The duo will bring their new music to a full-band tour spanning more than two dozen shows across North America from September and on October 8th-10th, they present the first biennial Good Moon Festival since 2024, taking over four venues throughout their hometown of Durham, NC. Tickets and info at sylvanesso.com