In step with the varicolored backdrop of Fall, Twin Cities-based band We Are the Willows presents its sonically explorative full-length album IV, set for distribution in collaboration with Brooklyn’s Youngbloods imprint August 29th. In title, the album nods to the project being the band’s fourth LP and is shorthand for Inside Voice, a side project between Willows lead Peter Miller and cellist Hilary James (Bathtub Cig) where the record’s writing derived. IV follows a series of three multi-genre EP projects released in 2023, shifting between classically tinged ambience, soaring falsetto mantras, and dancing syncopated rhythms to develop a fully formed amalgamation of the band’s prior output. Across eight new works, We Are the Willows’ latest effort explores their creative process through a procedural and holistic lens, the end result being a wonderfully earnest and stylistically polished discovery of artistic belonging.

We Are The Willows is the art-pop project of Minneapolis based singer/songwriter Peter Miller (creatively known as Peter M.). His unique countertenor voice is often supported by Jeremiah Satterthwaite on guitar, Travis Collins on bass and backup vocals, Hilary James on cello and backup vocals, and Josh McKay on drums. Active since 2014 and most notably recognized for their 2016 two part, twenty song concept album Picture (Portrait) (based on letters written between his grandparents during World War II), Miller’s outfit has garnered praise from NPR, BBC, Noisey, Paste Magazine, Buzzfeed, and Brooklyn Vegan. Over eight years, We Are The Willows has supported and shared the stage with acts including Blitzen Trapper, S. Carey, Phox, and Matt Pond PA across showcases at SXSW, Treefort Festival, and Milwaukee’s SummerFest.

Miller’s recent collaborations with Youngbloods (Now That I’m Older, Deep Breaths, and Everything Changed) mark a new chapter for the group. The end of the 2010s presented an existential turning point for We Are the Willows - reconsidering how, why, and for whom they made music. IV, as a developing project, felt ephemeral in 2017 in its beginnings as a two-person collaboration between James and Miller - a barebones set up of drums, cello, and lots of looping demanded time and consideration in how the album was recorded and performed. The duo re-assessed their set up, running vocals and strings through guitar amps in lieu of monitors to communicate with one another on stage. Miller describes the process as being “mad science” in real time - the project demanded focused attention largely because of the way it was performed between only two members. An initial pass at the album was recorded with Grammy award-winning sound engineer Brian Joseph (Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver) in 2019 but was set aside as the weight of outside obligations slowly pulled James and Miller from completing the album. The challenge of fully realizing IV was an exciting idea - a recurring, needling ambition nestled in the corners of Miller and James’ minds - but felt distant in the balance of their other endeavors. Years passed and ultimately, Miller experimented with the idea of folding the project into the full We Are The Willows band as a means to best execute the initial vision of IV. The outcome was a revelation, both in how Willows now performs live and in finalizing a record which seemed insurmountable using power in numbers; or more romantically, “togetherness”.

Iv’s procedural journey to totality underlines the album’s thematic throughline: belonging. Who was IV being made for? Why? What does the band do with their music once it’s done? Where does it exist? These questions are frequent for Miller in his many years as a musician, and are ones he, perhaps subconsciously, aimed to avoid to assume some sort of agency over IV:

“The internet is a weird place to "belong". I am increasingly feeling like I don't belong there. I'm also feeling like it is trying to take possession of me! These songs are permeated with that knowledge. I think we were trying to bypass it all somehow…I think we were figuring out if, and in what way, our music belonged to us. Or if music can belong to you? It sounds corny but I think if anything, we belong to it. With it.”

In its methodology, this latest work is definitively We Are the Willows. And in theme, the subject matter of Miller and James’ writing plays equally personal, swimming through questions both micro and macro - the band as a vehicle to understand fleeting moments alongside grandiose questions of where they stand within “the big picture.” “Fitness Parade” - IV’s opening salvo - sees Miller’s sky-high timbre propelled by marching war drums and contoured cello strokes, all massaged by swells of woodwinds setting the table for existential inquiry of titular themes in the preceding piece “Forgiveness/Forgetness.” Unrelenting (and sometimes unfounded) feelings of hope shine in “Saturday'' and “Sunday,” weaving brass accompaniment from Adelyn Strei down an increasingly untethered, psychedelic amalgam of echoes and abstraction. “Do You Remember When Your Heart Was Wild?,” the album’s sonic keystone, connects the collage of influences behind The Willows discography to this point, blending smatterings of Joanna Newsom, Dirty Projectors, and nineties evangelical hymns into vivid shades of orchestral art pop. “Would You Be Right?” and “Irony as it Relates to Complacency” explore the weight of reality in the digital age, its paradoxes, and our collective wellbeing as participants, paired with spiraling strings and Miller’s increasingly tender oration. Iv’s final piece, “To Be Where You Are,” appropriately arrives back at the theme of connection. Miller’s improvised serenation about his wife, describing the beauty of their shared self-assurance, is gracefully paralleled by the band’s elegant, almost matrimonial, instrumental accompaniment.

IV achieves definition in collaboration, and in turn We Are the Willows sees clearly through an era of creation which seems to prompt more distractions than it does answers:

“Togetherness. How to have togetherness. We’re just trying to do that, with our little band….”

“Music is what provides it.”