Baths today released Gut, his first new album in eights years and a vibrantly unbridled showcase of the acclaimed artist’s method of writing “from the stomach” versus from the heart – with his artful, intuitive brilliance on full display; stream it at all DSPs here and order it here. Landing on Pitchfork and Them’s most anticipated albums of the year, Gut and its singles (“Sea of Men” and “Eden”) have also earned glowing features and reviews from The AV Club (10 new albums to listen to in February), FLOOD Magazine (feature), NPR Music (New Music Friday playlist), Bandcamp Daily (New & Notable),Talkhouse (‘One Great Thing’ feature), PAPER Magazine (interview/video premiere), Northern Transmissions (review), Treblezine, All Music (review), Sirius XMU (Download 15), The Needle Drop (Best Songs of the Week, “Eden”), and more.

The album’s latest single “Governed” is a deeply affecting and brutally honest standout. As a stuttering electronic beat spools out into a wall of smacking synths and desperate wails, Baths’ Will Wiesenfeld sings candidly: “I will die waiting, I will die governed / Some crucial move I never discovered / I will be quiet, I will be othered.” “‘Governed’ was the first song I worked on for Gut, and I originally made it without the context of it being part of a record,” he says. “I liked it so much that I decided it would set the tone for the next album I wanted to do (among a few other deciding factors). The bleak nature of the lyrics and sort of propulsive feel drew an outline of what I had always wanted to make with live instruments, but I only sort of got that impetus after having made this song. For me it’s like an emotional gateway drug to the rest of the record—not to say that it goes down easy.”

Wiesenfeld will embark next month on an extensive headlining world tour across the US, UK and Europe to celebrate Gut, including stops at Austin’s SXSW Music Festival, Brooklyn’s Baby’s All Right (March 25th), and Los Angeles’s The Echo (April 20th). See below for a full itinerary; tickets are on-sale now HERE.

Gut is the most direct Baths LP to date. Longtime fans have often encountered themes of sex, romance, and all their offshoots in Wiesenfeld’s music—but they’ve never heard him quite like this. Gut also presents the greatest degree to which outside drummers have ever been involved in a Baths project to date (six LP tracks feature live drums by Casey Dietz and Sam KS). There’s a stronger emphasis on guitars, too (Wiesenfeld has played guitar for years in his other project, Geotic), and on eight songs, there are gorgeous strings arranged by Wiesenfeld, performed by longtime collaborators Isaura String Quartet, and engineered by Phil Hartunian at Tropico Beauty.

The most impressive record in Wiesenfeld’s career—which has also included soundtrack work for the beloved animated Netflix show Bee and PuppyCat as well as countless high profile collaborations and remixes (for Grizzly Bear, Flying Lotus, Imogen Heap, ODESZA, and many more)—Gut spans a breathtaking spectrum of lacerating hopelessness to lustful joy.