LUCIUS’ NEW SONG “DANCE AROUND IT” FEAT. BRANDI CARLILE AND SHERYL CROW DEBUTS TODAY  

March 16, 2022—Acclaimed indie pop band Lucius’ new song, “Dance Around It,” featuring special guests Brandi Carlile and Sheryl Crow, is debuting today—watch/share the official music video HERE.

Reflecting on the song, Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe share, “In many ways ‘Dance Around It’ cracked the intention for the entire record; to dance through the darkness. To take what may have been isolating and internal, and instead, make it loud, and put it on display – give it legs to dance. When we brought it to the studio, we asked our dear friends and collaborators (pinch me) Sheryl Crow and Brandi Carlile to sing with us; they were so present and instrumental during the writing and recording of our record – and hearing them sing on this track felt like dancing through that last part of a dark tunnel.”

“Dance Around It” is the latest song unveiled from Lucius’ anticipated new album, Second Nature, which will be released April 8 on Mom + Pop Music (U.S. and Mexico), Dine Alone (Canada), Second Nature Records/Secretly Distribution (RoW) [pre-order]. Produced by Dave Cobb and Brandi Carlile, Second Nature is a portrait of Laessig and Wolfe’s shared reflection, chronicling each other’s seismic life shifts—motherhood, divorce, unplanned career pauses—and setting it to music. Ahead of the release, the band has shared three additional album tracks: “Heartbursts,” “White Lies” and “Next To Normal,” of which Paste praises, “hyper-catchy choruses…with a timeless dance groove that does anything but overstay its welcome.”

In celebration of the new music, the band will embark on an extensive North American headline tour this spring followed by a series of European shows in September. Upcoming stops include New York’s Beacon Theatre, Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, Chicago’s Riviera Theatre and London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire among many others. In addition to the headline shows, the band will join Carlile on several marquee concerts this summer including Washington’s Gorge Amphitheatre, L.A.’s The Greek Theatre and Colorado’s Red Rock Amphitheatre. See below for complete tour details.

“It is a record that begs you not to sit in the difficult moments, but to dance through them,” Wolfe says. “It touches upon all these stages of grief—and some of that is breakthrough, by the way. Being able to have the full spectrum of the experience that we have had, or that I’ve had in my divorce, or that we had in lockdown, having our careers come to a halt, so to speak. I think you can really hear and feel the spectrum of emotion and hopefully find the joy in the darkness. It does exist. That’s why we made Second Nature and why we wanted it to sound the way it did: our focus was on dancing our way through the darkness.”

Of working on the project Carlile shares, “Lucius has been one of my favorite bands since their first studio album. I kept running into them at festivals and finding myself mystified by their power. This album feels like home to me and anyone growing up surrounded by 80s and 90s pop, but somehow Second Nature is the beginning of a new era—not just for Lucius, but for all of us. We need to get back up on our feet and that’s what this album is insisting we do. This is my first co-production with my dear pal Dave Cobb and I don’t know if I’ve ever been prouder even to witness something let alone get my hands on it. It was an absolute blast.”

Recorded primarily at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, the 10-song album was written by Laessig and Wolfe and features their longtime band members Peter Lalish, Dan Molad alongside Solomon Dorsey with additional contributions from Drew Erickson, Rob Moose and Gabriel Cabezas with mixing by Rob Kinelski and Molad as well as Carlile and Sheryl Crow on backing vocals.