Today, Hataałii (pronounced: hah – toth – lee) — the 21 year old artist from Window Rock, AZ that has attracted a following as “a master at conjuring a kind of Southwestern saudade” (Aquarium Drunkard) — releases Waiting For A Sign, a heady collection of ghost town anthems, short story mirages, and brain fog-clearing personal reckonings that is out now on Dangerbird Records.

As Hataałii metes out his careful, artful lyrics that revel in uncanny particularities and the desire to know the unknowable, Waiting For A Sign recalls the playfully languid puzzlement of Pavement circa-Wowee Zowee, the trickster melancholy of Lou Reed’s The Blue Mask, and the economical yet winking earnestness of Blaze Foley.

But, as easy as the tempos can get, Hataałii operates with purpose: the obscurantist details come into focus, giving way to trenchant observations about paranoia, accountability, and post-colonial fallout.

Listen to Waiting For A Sign here.

Alongside the album release, Hataałii shares a video for the propulsive, new wave-inflected loner’s soliloquy “Buckskin Boy.” Says Hataałii: “Me and Lonnie Begaye came up with the plot of the video in the Bashas parking lot in Window Rock. I initially wanted the video to be about an older guy who’s reminiscing on his glory days in sports, but the fair was happening and Lonnie thought we could utilize it.

I was all for it, because as an angst-filled kid growing up in Window Rock, the Navajo Nation Fair always felt like a crescendo of novelty and strangeness out of the entire year, and to get the opportunity to capture some of that on camera was cool. I also always found it interesting how concentrated and juicy the experience of a love story surrounding fairs are. I felt like it was a good way to represent the local community and talent too.”

Watch the “Buckskin Boy” video, directed by Lonnie Begaye, over at FLOOD.

Waiting For A Sign is Hataałii’s second album for Dangerbird following 2023’s Singing Into Darkness and, counting an array of self-released projects, his sixth album since 2019. Singing Into Darkness won plaudits from SPIN (who called him “2023’s breakout star”), FLOOD (“Hataałii is utterly charming, disarmingly approachable, and delightful in his playfulness”), and KCRW, and was named one of Aquarium Drunkard’s favorite albums of the year.

Read the full album bio here.

This fall, Hataałii will be hitting the road for dates with The Osees, The Slaps, Dirt Rhodes, and more. See all the dates below.

HATAAŁII LIVE DATES
OCT 5 — Austin TX @ Mohawk (Indoors) [+ The Slaps]
OCT 6 — San Antonio TX @ Paper Tiger [+ The Slaps]
OCT 7 — Dallas TX @ Club Dada [+ The Slaps]
OCT 13 — Albuquerque NM @ Sister Bar
OCT 15 — Shiprock NM @ Shiprock Chapter [+ The Osees]
OCT 20 — Phoenix AZ @ Dirty Drummer [+ Dirt Rhodes]
OCT 23 — Albuquerque NM @ AMP Concerts, Tony Hillerman Library