(Photo Credit: Danny Clinch)

Southern alt-country rock outfit Drive-By Truckers has released their new single “What It Means”. The track is the most recent single to come off of their upcoming album American Band. DBT was recently featured as the co-headliner (along with legendary hip-hop act The Roots) of New York’s Lowdown Hudson River Festival. You can watch the lyric video for the new track below:

Patterson Hood’s voice soars beautifully and thoughtfully on this track. This track, like a lot of Drive-By Truckers’ discography, is unabashedly political. The topic this time around is the racially-motivated police killings that have been plaguing our country for the last few years. Hood questions whether the white American populace is either unwilling or unable to grasp the prejudice that black Americans experience on a daily basis. It is a haunting yet beautiful track that is so unfortunately relevant in today’s political climate.

Drive-By Truckers will be touring this winter. 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of the band’s inception. In order to celebrate this and create their finest work, the band is attempting to deconstruct and analyze what it truly means to be an American. Today’s political climate is extremely volatile, and the right and the left are further apart than they have been in decades. Drive-By Truckers are very aware of this, and their new work reads as an impassioned plea for American citizens to band together, quit the mudslinging, and focus on solving the issues that are dividing the country.