After much teasing, Julien Baker and Torres have finally announced their new collaborative album, Send a Prayer My Way. The LP, which arrives April 18 via Matador, finds both indie-rock artists turning toward a country sound. Get a taste of that with “Sylvia,” their latest single from the album, which comes with a Caity Arthur–directed video starring members of the Stud Country community. Check it out below.
In a statement about the song’s origin, Torres’ Mackenzie Scott shared, “The morning I went to pick up my dog Sylvia from an upstate shelter, I was at home making my coffee and I turned on WFMU and Dolly Parton’s ‘Cracker Jack’ was on. I burst into tears—it felt like the universe was telling me she was going to be mine. (Sylvia was only meant to be a foster.) I remember thinking that I’d love to write a song like that, a song that people could feel in their chest within five seconds of turning on the radio, because anyone who has ever had the honor of sharing a home with a beloved pet knows that a pet is family—they’re the best friends you could ever have.”
Last year, Baker and Torres released the song “Sugar in the Tank” and performed it together on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, with Baker on banjo and Torres on electric guitar. That track is one of 12 on the new album. Send a Prayer My Way is their first album written and performed together, but has been a shared idea between the two artists dating as far back as 2016.
Of course, this isn’t nearly the first collaborative album on Baker’s résumé, as she put out the Grammy-winning album The Record with her Boygenius bandmates, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, in 2023, as well as their follow-up The Rest. As for Scott, her most recent Torres LP was 2024’s What an Enormous Room.
Revisit the interviews “I’m Drowning but I’m OK: The Revelations of Torres’ Mackenzie Scott” and “Julien Baker on Being Queer, Southern, Christian, and Proud” on the Pitch.
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Send a Prayer My Way:
01 Dirt
02 The Only Marble I’ve Got Left
03 Sugar in the Tank
04 Bottom of a Bottle
05 Downhill Both Ways
06 No Desert Flower
07 Tape Runs Out
08 Off the Wagon
09 Tuesday
10 Showdown
11 Sylvia
12 Goodbye Baby