Panda Bear and Sonic Boom take their next collaboration offline

Panda Bear and Sonic Boom announced A ? of When, their latest collaborative album and the follow-up to 2022’s Reset. The record is due 10 July through Domino, but the unusual release strategy is the real 28 May talking point: the album will be available physically and as a download, but not on streaming services.

Noah Lennox and Pete Kember are deliberately pushing the project toward radio, record shops, listening parties, Q&As, live shows and real-life interactions. In a music culture where everything is optimized for instant access and disposable attention, that choice feels almost radical. The album features contributions from Mary Lattimore and Daniel O’Sullivan, and the first single is available as a download.

For an indie digest, this is important because it is not only a new Animal Collective-adjacent release. It is a statement about how music circulates and how artists might reclaim some intimacy from the platforms. The phrase IRL not URL may sound cute, but the question behind it is serious: what happens when artists stop feeding the scroll and ask listeners to meet them somewhere slower? Source: https://pitchfork.com/news/panda-bear-and-sonic-boom-reveal-new-collab-album/