In 2023, the singer-songwriter Ben Kweller suffered an unfathomable loss: His 16-year-old son Dorian died in a car accident. As a way to process his grief, Kweller threw himself into writing music. This spring, he'll release Cover The Mirrors, a new album that features contributions from people like MJ Lenderman and the Flaming Lips. We posted lead single "Optimystic," and now Kweller has followed that song with "Dollar Store," a new track with backup vocals from Katie Crutchfield, better known as Waxahatcee.
Much like "Optimystic," Kweller's new track "Dollar Store" is fuzzy, shimmery garage-pop, though this song is slower and prettier than that one. It's not the kind of music that we tend to associate with deep emotional pain. Instead, it's the kind of thing that Kweller was making in the '90s, when he first arrived on the radar as a teenage alt-rock star. Kweller is really good at that stuff, and the twinkly fuzz of "Dollar Store" isn't all that far from early Waxahatchee records. On the chorus, Kweller and Crutchfield sound gorgeous together. (Waxahatchee, incidentally, just released their own non-album single "Mud" last week.) This song rules, and you can hear it below.
Cover The Mirrors is out 5/30 on Kweller's own Noise Company label. Read our 2023 Ben Kweller interview here.
