A big day for fans of gorgeous Gershwinian slapstick, America’s pastime, and puzzles: Today, the Brooklyn composer and indie bandleader Pegg announces Presque Tout: Variations no. 435-514 “Baseball Season,” a brief but densely-packed three-song suite coming out via IS NOT MUSIC and created in collaboration with the legendary songwriter and arranger Van Dyke Parks.

Accompanying today’s announcement is “No Dice,” a fleet and festive springtime fantasia. With a low, light viscosity, it’s quick on its feet, like a dash to home plate.

Watch the baseball-themed “No Dice” visualizer here, and stream the track here.

Presque Tout is currently available as a limited-edition 500-piece puzzle, accompanied by downloads of the project (out now), as well as a 6-panel digipak CD with a 4-panel insert (out July 11). Presque Tout will arrive digitally September 19, preorder a CD via Bandcamp or your favorite independent record shop here.

Last week, the Presque Tout project came to life at a Listening Lounge & Puzzle Party at Secret Riso Club in Brooklyn (see a glimpse here). There, following a discussion with journalist Jesse Rifkin (author of This Must Be the Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City), Pegg announced CD and digital release plans.

“No Dice” is the sole Presque Tout composition to have previously seen the light of day on Pegg’s Bartees Strange-produced debut album…but only its psychedelia remains, greatly reimagined from soulful rocker to post-baroque balladry.

Says Pegg: “Once, ‘No Dice’ was half full rock band and half electronics—but that foundation’s been erased in favor of Van Dyke’s beautiful string arrangements. Lyrically, its setting is still a Jewish wedding, the irresponsible-but-innocent kids getting hitched but it’s nearly derailed. Drawing largely on my own wedding but without any derailment (or cabana).”

Watch the visualizer for “No Dice” here

We went searching for a place to pray
All pockets of peacefulness ended with,
“Kids, go away,”
Sasha got herself scared and tried to hide inside the cabana
No dice

I really love her

Pegg is the highly collaborative Brooklyn project helmed by Xander Duell. Pegg’s self-titled debut was released in August 2024, described by Gold Flake Paint as “reaching for something glittering just out of reach, and it all swells together alongside a classic-NYC-indie-rock heartbeat.” Pegg was produced by acclaimed indie artist Bartees Strange and award-winning Irish composer Alex Dowling.

Van Dyke Parks is a legendary arranger, composer, performer, and producer who has worked with artists ranging from Joanna Newsom to Bob Dylan, Skrillex to Haruomi Hosono, and most famously, with the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson on the “lost” album Smile. As Duell says, “Van Dyke Parks is on a short list of the most important names in American music of the 20th century. Talking to Van Dyke is like being shot up with antidepressants as you ride a horse through the Swiss Alps in late spring. I always considered him my musical godfather and I haven’t stopped pinching myself since the moment I heard he agreed to work with me.”