Crooked Fingers, the long-running moniker for Eric Bachmann’s output from 1998 to 2016, returns with new music. On February 27th, 2026, Crooked Fingers releases ‘Swet Deth’, their first album since 2011’s ‘Breaks in the Armor’. The band shares a video for lead single “Cold Waves”, featuring Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan, marking a thrilling reintroduction to what Bachmann achieves under the Crooked Fingers name. His wry, sensitive attention to the pains of breaking up turns anthemic through Jeremy Wheatley’s drums and gains power pop gloss from McCaughan’s harmonies.
Bachmann’s return to Crooked Fingers came from the scope of songs on ‘Swet Deth’, which demanded more complex arrangements and larger rooms than his recent solo work. Chasing what the songs required, he called in familiar collaborators including Wheatley on drums and percussion and Jon Rauhouse on pedal steel, while inviting a dream team of new contributors like Matt Berninger and Sharon Van Etten to record. After years of solo touring, the process of expanding his sound stretched and challenged Bachmann similarly to recording as Crooked Fingers in the past, making the decision to return to the moniker straightforward.
“I dreamed of a beautiful, colossal, six-winged inamorata rising off the horizon above the ashes of the dying earth; arctic lasers pulsating from her eyes and fire streaming from her fingertips, freezing then melting then freezing everything again in an instant; lighting up the night with death and apocalypse, destroying everything in her path,” Bachmann says about “Cold Waves”. “When I woke I realized I had fallen deeply in love with her, but was worried that it was actually a trap, which, in hindsight, it clearly was.” Bachmann and Crooked Fingers are preparing for a 2026 North American tour, with more information coming soon.