Today, Carriers — the project helmed by Cincinnati, Ohio’s Curt Kiser — shares the title track to Every Time I Feel Afraid, their debut album for Brassland (This Is The Kit, Bartees Strange) due out May 2. Listen to “Every Time I Feel Afraid” and pre-order/save Every Time I Feel Afraid here.

The album’s title track is the heart of the project, one that reckons with the realities and hardships of a life spent running down a dream. “It’s a kind of mantra I used to get through a really hard week,” Kiser explains. “While driving, my partner and I were hit by a drunk driver, then assaulted by the guy who hit us. A few days later my van got robbed in Chicago while I was on a short run of shows between Ohio and Illinois. We borrowed some gear, got through the gig, and I returned home. My laptop was one of the things stolen, so I knocked out the song on an old Fostex multi-track borrowed from a friend.”

Watch the lyric video for “Every Time I Feel Afraid” here, created in collaboration with Liela Crosset and Egan Parks.

“Every Time I Feel Afraid” follows recent single “Blurry Eyes,” featuring contributions from Bryan Devendorf (The National), Dave Hartley (The War On Drugs), Ben Lanz (Beirut, The National, Sufjan Stevens), and Peter Katis (Interpol, The National, Glenn Hansard, Gaslight Anthem). It also comes after Carriers’ contribution to Love Los Angeles: A Charity Compilation in Aid of the 2025 Los Angeles Wildfires Benefiting the Mutual Aid LA Network by Hit the North Records, with an original song (not on the new record) titled “Good Dreaming.”

Carriers has opened up for the likes of Big Thief and Damien Jurado and, in summer 2024, nabbed opening slots on tours with Band Of Horses and Fruit Bats. Sharon Van Etten even listed Carriers in the “Recommended Listening” section of the liner notes for her 2019 LP Remind Me Tomorrow.

It’s the result of Kiser’s dedicated songwriting practice. As he explains: “When I was 19 years old, I looked to the heaven’s and asked what I should do with my life. I grabbed the old 1950s Goya guitar which was passed down to me from my great Uncle Andy, sat on my porch in Cinci’s Camp Washington neighborhood and proceeded to write one of the first songs I’d ever written on my own. From that point on, I’ve never stopped writing. It’s my therapy.”

With Every Time I Feel Afraid, Kiser takes heed of all of the little signs the universe has sent his way and commits to his destiny as a songwriter. “It’s who I am and what I’m good at,” he says. “It’s taken a few hundred songs to feel confident in it, but I’m there now. I’ve accepted it as my life’s work no matter how successful I’m perceived to be in the world outside my home.”

Every Time I Feel Afraid has already received organic radio support from a who’s who of tastemaking Triple A format radio stations in North America — several of which have global audiences: Seattle’s KEXP, Los Angeles’ KCRW, Canada’s CBC Afterdark program, and Philadelphia’s WXPN which added “Sometimes” and included Carriers on their nationally syndicated World Cafe program.