Patterson Hood Of Drive-By Truckers Announces New Solo Album Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams For February 2025 Release, Share New Single “A Werewolf And A Girl” Featuring Lydia Loveless

With their latest album having been released just about two years ago and their current North American tour just about to finish up, it’s safe to say that the Georgian rockers Drive-By Truckers have been keeping themselves busy recently. Even with twenty-eight years of musical mastery under their belt, the band shows no signs of ceasing their craft, for no matter how many artists may join and/or leave the group (including six-time Grammy winner Jason Isbell), the spirit established by the band’s co-founders, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, still holds true. 

As great as it is to make music with a group, though, sometimes it’s healthy for an artist to have sole creative control over a project. Seemingly, Patterson Hood agreed with this point, as the singer/songwriter recently announced his first solo album in twelve years, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams. With a set release date of February 21, 2025, the album will allegedly revolve around Hood’s childhood and the struggles he faced while entering adulthood.

We can see this sentiment expressed in the album’s lead single, “A Werewolf And A Girl,” which Hood describes as being a rumination on his first real relationship in high school and their break up a year later. The song takes its name from a line where Hood mentions watching An American Werewolf in London (1981), whose later plot centers on a man who falls in love with a pretty British lady, yet feels he can never be too close to her because he’s afraid he’ll hurt her while in wolf form. Joining him in the song is Lydia Loveless, an artist that Hood was personally gunning for. According to him, “In my head, it was always going to be Lydia. I mean, I didn’t really even have a second choice. The subject matter’s kind of provocative, so I wouldn’t have wanted to ask somebody that I didn’t feel was a friend.”

Other featured artists in the album include Waxahatchee (a clear fan of Hood’s work), Steve Berlin and Brad Morgan, for even in a solo project, Hood clearly enjoys the input of others.

The album’s tracklist has been listed as follows:

1. Exploding Trees
2. A Werewolf and a Girl (ft. Lydia Loveless)
3. The Forks of Cypress (ft. Waxahatchee)
4. Miss Coldiron’s Oldsmobile
5. The Pool House
6. The Van Pelt Parties (ft. Wednesday)
7. Last Hope
8. At Safe Distance
9. Airplane Screams
10. Pinocchio

You can listen to “A Werewolf And A Girl” for yourself here: