We Are Scientists today share “What You Want Is Gone,” the third single from their upcoming album Qualifying Miles, out July 18 via Groenland Records. The band has also announced today that their album release show will be at Brooklyn’s Union Pool (484 Union Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211) on July 30th.
Built around a melancholic and cascading lead guitar riff that loops and evolves, the track moves between soft restraint and big climaxes. There’s a nod to 2000s indie ballads while singer and guitarist Keith Murray’s vocals are direct and open, carrying a sense of hope and regret in the track’s repeating lyric: “You can’t just wait around for what you want / if what you want is gone.”
On the track, Keith says: “I spent a lot of my early songwriting career celebrating the benefits of total passivity. A bunch of songs off of our first album, like ‘Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt,’ ‘The Great Escape,’ and ‘Inaction,’ are essentially manifestos on my overarching emotional philosophy back then, which was basically that, in life, it wasn’t really the destination or the journey, but rather the tension just before the journey begins that was most delicious. Well, it only took me like 20 years to realize that young Keith was kind of an idiot. I mean, I guess I did know that then, too. but I was simply more willing to indulge that idiocy. Plus, I was drinking with Chris Cain [bassist] at Lit Lounge in Manhattan like six nights a week, so my decision-making skills were low. I’m still a coward, yes, and I’m still fairly risk-averse, but I now at least believe that shooting your shot while you’ve still got the chance is a laudatory move. I probably should’ve been listening to more self-help podcasts, all this time.”
The accompanying video is made up of live and tour footage, showing the band in their element. The band invited fans on their recent EU tour to share video footage of the song’s first live performances and combined it with their own behind-the-scenes content. The result is a stripped-back, intimate portrait of the band on tour.
And on the video, Keith offers: “We’ve always thought the song’s vibe suggested some kind of road movie, but we became discouraged when Gronland rejected a €35 million budget we submitted to remake Thelma & Louise. Then, as we were starting an EU tour in April, we realized that at each night’s show we’ve got a roomful of cinematographers already equipped with really good cameras, and that we could dragoon them into shooting our movie for us. We added a little bit of spice shot backstage and on days off, dove into the edit, and it started to dawn on us that we had beaten Ridley Scott at his own game, and at virtually no cost. Now, we’re in talks with Ridley’s production company to receive a free BluRay copy of Thelma & Louise – possibly signed.”
Qualifying Miles is a return to the music that shaped the band’s childhoods, with echoes of ’90s guitar music threading throughout the project. With their trademark danceable, razor-sharp hooks and witty lyricism, the record is the sound of a band revisiting their roots while interrogating the distance they have traveled. It follows two previous self-produced albums Huffy (2021) and Lobes (2023), which were beloved by fans and critics alike for their ambitious experimentation with studio production and expanded sonic palettes. A sharp, reflective ninth studio album that trades studio maximalism for raw immediacy, Qualifying Miles explores themes of loss, memory, and the half-haunting pull of the past. And that’s what makes the record so compelling: it feels instinctive, unfiltered, and human – the kind of record only a band this experienced and self-aware could make.
