Indie rock band Islands have announced their upcoming album And That’s Why Dolphins Lost Their Legs will be released on August 25. The band’s upcoming album is a follow up to the 2021 album Islomania.

“[Islomania] was exuberant and hopeful, and Dolphins is like the grim rejoinder,” songwriter Nick Thorburn says. “The songs attempt to tap into some of our darker impulses. The grim, unshakeable feeling that we live in hell, that there is no future, that all hope is lost. I wanted to explore those depths and see where it lead me.” said band member Nick Thorburn.

Thorburn worked on And That’s Why Dolphins Lost Their Legs at his home in Los Angeles, as well as at Hollywood’s Sunset Sound with Chris Coady, in upstate New York with Ratatat’s Mike Stroud and in Los Feliz with Patrick Ford.

The music itself is settled on the spaces in between the silences and the spareness. There is an evocative wooziness within each song; a disorienting disassociation that draws you into its strange world.

For example, “I was in my head/all my friends and all my lovers dead,” Thorburn sings on the second song, “And All You Can Do Is Laugh.” Ruminating on a world being destroyed before our eyes.”

Thorburn continues on with: “Something’s changed/ Something’s wrong/Something strange must be going on/Since it came/Things just aren’t the same/You see the light/Coming over the hill/From up in the sky/Like a thief they come in the night.”

In the press release Thorburn explains the meaning behind And That’s Why Dolphins Lost Their Legs.

“I was interested in the idea of regression. Evolution in the opposite direction, you know? We think of fish evolving by growing legs—walking out of the primordial swamp towards an enlightened existence—but what if things went the other way? What if a four legged dolphin took one look around, saw what humans had done, and said ‘fuck it, I’m going back in’?”

And That’s Why Dolphins Lost Their Legs Tracklist 

1 Life’s a Joke
2 And All You Can Do Is Laugh
3 Headlines
4 Superstitious
5 Hard to Argue
6 Pelican
7 Driven Snow
8 Bite My Tongue
9 Violet
10 Too Far Gone
11 Up the Down Staircase