Song of the Day: Nada Surf - Believe You're Mine

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Midday Show with Cheryl Waters, is “Believe You're Mine” by Nada Surf from the 2016 album You Know Who You Are, out March 4th on Barsuk.

Nada Surf - Believe You're Mine (MP3)

A year ago this month, Nada Surf frontman Matthew Caws tweeted that the long-running New York band had a new album "in the can." Well, we waited all year in 2015, and a follow-up never arrived to 2012's The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy. What's up, Caws?

"I was so eager to have an album done that I believed in it as it was," he said in an interview with AXS. "But the great thing about being 'finished' is that you can take a breath and evaluate, because the pressure to 'do it' is gone. The more I listened and thought about it, the more I realized that I might want to keep working. Also, I'd sent the tracks to my friend Josh, who runs Barsuk Records, the label we've been on since 2002, and he said 'It's great,' but followed that with a pregnant pause. I got the message. I didn't take that as a critique as much as a belief that I could do better. It was very freeing."

For Caws, this freedom led him to Los Angeles where he teamed up with Dan Wilson of Semisonic, who co-wrote two tracks and even sang back-up. This album is also their first recorded as a quartet: veteran touring musician Doug Gillard joined the core trio in the studio. The result is You Know Who You Are, their eighth album (and fifth for Barsuk).

You can follow the band on Twitter and Facebook. Nada Surf are playing an all ages show on Wednesday, May 18th at The Neptune. In the meantime, watch fan-shot video of the guys playing today's Song of the Day at Webster Hall in New York last in November: