Kye Alfred Hillig is back with “Ezekiel Bobbing For Apples,” the first single from his upcoming ninth album ‘The All-Night Costume Company’, due March 4. The Tacoma songwriter builds the track around haunting guitar leads and male-female harmonies that carry the emotional gravity of classic country duets, sitting somewhere between alternative-country and indie rock with the plainspoken urgency of someone shaped by punk rooms rather than polish. Hillig has spent more than two decades working the margins of the Puget Sound scene, releasing a deep catalog defined by sharp hooks and lyrical candor, and this single finds him at his most direct and melodic.
Recorded at Ex Ex Studios in Seattle and produced by Johnny Nails, the track moves with lean, charged energy. Guitars circle and cut while organ and percussion interlock with real momentum, leaving space for Hillig’s vocal delivery to carry the weight. The blend of voices adds tension rather than gloss, and the production stays close to the bone throughout. Hillig describes the song as “singing up from the bottom of the well,” adding, “everything feels kind of screwed and hopeless at times, but the message is I am with you. There’s something freeing about saying that out loud.” Listeners drawn to Father John Misty, The Jayhawks, and early-era The Shins are already responding to the instinct for narrative and melody here, and the early word is that ‘The All-Night Costume Company’ is shaping up to be one of his strongest records yet.