Don’t worry: Sleater-Kinney is back. The Olympia rockers dropped new single “Worry With You,†the band’s first-ever as a duo, and announced new album, Path of Wellness, to follow on June 11. The album, Sleater-Kinney’s tenth, will be the first to be entirely self-produced by the band, and features local Washington musicians in the absence of drummer Janet Weiss, who left the band in 2019. Weiss’s departure came amid a public dustup over Sleater-Kinney’s last album, The Center Won’t Hold, produced by Carrie Brownstein’s close friend Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent. In her first interview after leaving the band, Weiss said she was no longer “a creative equal in the band.â€
Curiously, news of Sleater-Kinney’s new album comes days ahead of the release of St. Vincent’s next album, Daddy’s Home. “Worry With You†seems to bridge some of the pop-slanted stylings of The Center Won’t Hold with the band’s usual lower-fi, guitar-oriented sound. It comes with a music video starring Fabi Reyna and Megan Watson as a couple struggling to share tiny apartment — fitting for an album that, as a press release said, came “in the midst of 2020’s endless turbulence.†Here’s to a less-turbulent album cycle for this band.