Today, the 22-year-old singer, songwriter, and poet Hataałii (hah-toth-lee) releases I’ll Be Around, an unvarnished and intimate collection of wintry folk-country, via Panther Mountain. Though still shaded by his sideways poeticism, I’ll Be Around is Hataałii at his most earnest — elegant elegies for burnt-out romantics in various states of heartbreak.

Listen to and purchase I’ll Be Around here.

Inspired by a blend of visionary sadsacks (Paul Westerberg, Neil Young), country classics (Waylon Jennings, Cotton Jones), and experts in expansive DIY arrangements (Julia Holter, Richard Hawley), I’ll Be Around revels in a peculiar sense of dreary beauty. It strikes upon a rich and fascinating vein of creativity, intent on capturing the ineffable ambience of a particular moment.

“Let It Roll,” today’s focus track, is surrounded by Hataałii’s sobering, soul-stirring string arrangements as an air of that singular Western heavy-heartedness wavers through the bass, and he attempts to dig himself out of the emotional gutter.

Listen to “Let It Roll” here.

“I think I got a little tired of doing the whole ‘professional studio’ thing,” Hataałii says, referencing his decision to record the album in a small, 9 x 14 foot shed in Albuquerque. That sense of place injects a frazzled spontaneity to Hataałii’s performances. “Sometimes it feels good to put out music that sounds like it was recorded in a shed.”

“I also ended up playing every goddamn instrument, again,” he adds, referencing the sheets of cello, lap-steel, and 12-string acoustic guitars that lend I’ll Be Around its ghostly presence.

Following 2023’s “utterly charming, disarmingly approachable” (FLOOD) breakthrough Singing Into Darkness and 2024’s “exhilarating” (Bandcamp) Waiting From A Sign, I’ll Be Around is fresh entry in a rapidly expanding catalogue of music that draws out flashes of humanity in the midst of 21st century American malaise.

Over three independent albums, two records for Dangerbird, various singles, and at least one mixtape, Hataałii has built an idiosyncratic universe, establishing himself as “a master at conjuring a kind of Southwestern saudade” (Aquarium Drunkard). His songs combine “a dreamy, psychedelic fusion of indie-rock and melancholic pop” (KEXP) with a carefully cryptic, perhaps unconscious topicality. As obscurantist details come into focus, they give way to trenchant observations about paranoia, accountability, and post-colonial fallout.