The War on Drugs' Robbie Bennett shares new solo singles, "Footprints in the Ash" and "Vermiculite"

The tracks follow previous singles "Sister" and "The Light on Your Face", expanding on Bennett's interest in approaching music with a greater sense of openness and discovery. "I’m still peeling the onion. Steloken, as a title, came from my daughter’s mispronunciation of skeleton," he says. "I want to get back to that innocent place where the language is unwritten, technique is just kinetic energy in your body, and the art is fluid and devoid of self-consciousness. It’s the same reason people seek out a first-take recording, before you really 'know' a song. I’ve watched my kids paint and play piano."

"At first, you marvel at how abstract and simple everything is," he continues. "Then it’s like Eve biting into the apple. Suddenly you need to draw shapes, form chords, understand harmony. Your art gets worse for a long time before you can find your way back to that original freedom. I’m trying to unplug the conscious mind and release the muscle memories and all of the feelings."

"Footprints in the Ash" draws inspiration from the natural landscape of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, with Bennett describing it as "a walk in the woods". "I was thinking about the burned-out areas of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, and the beauty of flowers and their colors against the ashy ground," he says.

In the spirit of experimentation, "Vermiculite" saw Bennett use a vocoder for the first time, allowing him to work beyond any constraints he perceived around his singing abilities. "Removing the conventional limits of my voice felt incredibly freeing," he explains. "I was suddenly unburdened by all the inhibitions and expectations I'd developed around my own singing voice."