The Wild Feathers, Nathan Graham

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Jody Domingue

The band The Wild Feathers in a blue room.

The Wild Feathers

media release: Critically acclaimed Nashville country rockers The Wild Feathers have released their new heartland masterpiece, Sirens (New West) on Oct. 4. Sirens was produced by 3x GRAMMY® Award-winner Shooter Jennings and features memorable singles "Sanctuary," "Stereo," and "Pretending," all of which the band just performed on CBS Saturday Morning in late September.

Sirens sees The Wild Feathers returning with the album they’ve been building towards since their foundation over a decade ago, a spirited collection of road-worn, sharply woven tales chronicling a life worth living, love worth holding, and the hard-earned lessons found along the ride. The follow-up to 2021’s Alvarado – the band’s much-lauded debut for New West Records – marks the band’s most sprawling, richly descriptive album thus far, channeling heartland rock excellence, old-school guitar riffs, rootsy jams, and heartfelt stories tailor-made for open-road therapy with windows down and speakers blaring.

The Wild Feathers’ goal for their fifth studio album was to push beyond simply recreating a handful of demos and instead create something altogether new, with a fresh perspective heretofore untapped over the course of their previous releases. With that in mind, band members Ricky Young, Joel King, Taylor Burns, Ben Dumas, and Brett Moore traveled some 2,000 miles from their homebase in Nashville to work with longtime friend and first-time collaborator Shooter Jennings at his Dave’s Room studios in North Hollywood, CA. The Wild Feathers entered the studio with a largely blank slate, bringing almost 30 rough draft song ideas and then developing them into a head-turning collection that showcases their distinctive ability to blend country storytelling with rock ‘n’ roll showmanship, from “Don’t Know” to “Pretending,” a stop-you-in-your-tracks piano ballad that’s bound to send lighters into the sky when the band takes to the road later this year. A true statement piece, Sirens is The Wild Feathers at their very best, a time-tested, harmonized culmination formed by a veteran band Jennings praises as “a collective of truly deep soulful musicians and writers who have come together and stayed together over the years.”

“I had already met the Wild Feathers years before we worked on this new album, and was really excited to get into the studio with them," says Jennings. "They’re great players and great songwriters and they all sing like their own blackbirds. They’re also great people and I enjoyed every moment in the studio with them. We cut it a while back, and what stuck with me was their prowess and sense of humor. They’re true students of music and I’m so excited for the album to finally come out.”

Founded in 2010 by Young, King, and Burns, The Wild Feathers have eluded easy classification over the course of four studio albums, a rarities release, and acclaimed live album recorded at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium, fusing Americana, country, folk, heartland rock, blues, Southern flare and occasional punk attitude into something altogether their own. Sirens marks like the next step forward from such career-making songs as 2013’s Triple A radio hit, “The Ceiling,” and 2021’s rip-roaring “Ain’t Looking,” showcasing strengths built from traveling on a virtually non-stop live schedule that saw sold-out headline tours, sought-after slots on festival stages including Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, Austin City Limits Festival, and Americana Fest, and dates alongside such legends as Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. Outside of touring, writing, and recording together, The Wild Feathers have also proven among Nashville’s most sought-after players and songwriters. King’s resume includes cutting bass on Miranda Lambert’s 2019 RIAA Gold-certified Wildcard and Lainey Wilson’s 2022 breakout effort, Bell Bottom Country, both of which received GRAMMY® Awards for “Best Country Album.” As songwriters, Young, Burns and King have worked with alt-country icons The Jayhawks and collaborated on the hit ABC series Nashville, among other projects.

“I love being part of a band that is always growing and evolving,” says Ricky Young. “We want to keep challenging ourselves to make new music while always continuing to grow and be challenged. For us, this is the best version of what we’ve always done. We’re not the band we were 10 years ago. We’re much better writers now. Much better performers. We’re much better people. We’ve grown a lot.”

“We just wanted to write a shit load of songs, find a great producer and let go of the reins a little bit,” says Joel King. “We were like, let’s just do it like a band.”