Scarves share title track “Strays Forever” from upcoming LP produced by Chris Walla

The song shares its name with the album because, as the band explain, no other moment captures the record’s thematic core as directly. The song asks, “how do you still have faith after a decade of false starts?” Conceived originally as a musical before mutating into a loose concept album, Strays Forever follows a couple navigating grief, anxiety, and the complicated hope of planning a future they feel brave enough to bring a baby into.

Sessions took place at Hall of Justice in Seattle, marking Scarves’ first time handing production reins to an outsider. Walla – known for his work with Ratboys, Petey USA, and his former band Death Cab for Cutie – pushed the group further into experimentation than they'd gone before: Speak & Spell toys fed through arpeggiators, live takes instead of click tracks, and flute, strings, and deliberate tape manipulation. Lead vocalist Niko Stathakopoulos describes Walla’s studio ethos as a “Willy Wonka” approach.

That philosophy aligns neatly with Stathakopoulos’s own creative restlessness. In recent years he has thrown himself into clowning and improv, disciplines he says taught him to embrace chaos and connect more directly with what is happening in a room. The same spirit ripples through Strays Forever, a record built on choices that shouldn’t work on paper but do.

Scarves have been a steady presence in Seattle’s all-ages DIY circuit since forming in 2013. Stathakopoulos came up playing venues like the Firehouse in Redmond, the same all-ages ecosystem that once helped platform Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse when underage shows were banned in Seattle proper. Their 2022 album Delicate Creatures earned them support slots with PUP, Deerhoof, and The Dodos, and sharpened a sound that threads the literary indie-rock of The Weakerthans through more mathy influences.