The Austin-based alternative rock act …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead has announced a new studio album titled XI: Bleed Here Now. Along with the announcement from the band came the release of two new singles from the project, “No Confidence” and “Salt in Your Eyes.” Bleed Here Now is set to release July 15 via Dine Alone Records and Century Media, and is available for pre-order here.

Bleed Here Now, produced by Conrad Keeley, Jason Reece and Charles Godfrey, has been noted as being new territory in terms of the album’s production style, due to the fact that it is the band’s first project produced in quadraphonic surround sound. For the first time, listeners have now been made able to listen to Trail of Dead in both studio and surround sound, promising a more immersive sonic experience. The idea to introduce the production technique stems from their connection to KamranV, who was a longtime user of spatial sound and introduced them to a plug-in called QUARK, which allowed the group to produce in quadraphonic sound. The process of introducing surround sound influenced not only how the band produced the project, but also the recording process, as the band set up microphones at different points in the project to send signal to four channels. Conrad Keely noted that on their upcoming track “Growing Divide,” Trail of Dead brought in Spoon’s Britt Daniel as a guest vocalist, after the band thought about “how cool it would be to have our friend Britt Daniel come in to sing one of the harmonies, so that we could have four different voices separated out between two stereo mixes.”

“No Confidence” and “Salt in Your Eyes” present themselves as the first tastes that listeners will receive of the upcoming project and the band’s new approach to sound. Between the two tracks, the band has shown off a great deal of range in terms of moods and sounds off of the upcoming project, with “No Confidence” focusing on massive, thrilling and epic riffs that create a triumphant and heavy sound, and with “Salt in Your Eyes” being a more catchy and upbeat sounding track that concludes with a huge wall of noise produced primarily by the guitars.

Watch the official videos for “Salt in Your Eyes” and “No Confidence” via YouTube below.

XI: Bleed Here Now will be Trail of Dead’s eleventh studio album, following their 2020 release X: The Godless Void and Other Stories.