Willie J Healey returns with details of a new EP, 143, and shares “Ditch” single

The new five-track release, the follow-up to his 2023 album Bunny, stitches together home recordings Healey made on a 4-track with sessions produced by Loren Humphrey in New York, the same producer who shaped Bunny’s warm, live-room feel.

Talking about “Ditch”, Healey describes the track as something that arrived fully formed, “sent from above. I just sat there with my arms open and it fell down to me,” he says. “A gift from the tape lords, Loren Humphrey at the wheel me in the passenger seat with the windows all the way down. It’s a feeler about old fashioned brains, Romeo and Juliet type situations, being young and scared.”

The EP’s title, meanwhile, comes from a pager-era code. “I called it 143 because my friend sent me a message using that code and it took me a while to figure out that it means ‘I love you.’ I thought, hey that’s a nice way of not being too soppy,” Healey explains. The songs, he adds, are deliberately unvarnished. “The songs and recordings really don’t have many bells and whistles, they’re all pretty straight up – we wanted to get the message across as directly as possible. It’s my most Neil yet.”

The October headline run begins on 8 October at Just Dropped In in Coventry, then visits Blackpool’s Bootleg Social, Glasgow’s Tenement Trail, a support slot for Sea Power at Brighton’s Chalk on 22 October, and the Boia Festival in St Davids on 23 October. Tickets are on sale now.

143 artwork

143 tracklist

“Ditch”
“S'all Good”
“143”
“True Misery”
“Bottle Rocket”