With a guest appearance from Dana Colley on baritone saxophone, An Owl Hoots Your Name At Night is the stunning new single from Whitney Walker.

By Graeme Smith

Feature photo by Will Bradford

Opening lively and jazzy, the track quickly breaks down into a psychedelic groove with oodles of organ. The lyrics are suitably surreal and tell a gripping story, charismatically delivered by the vocals. Throughout, the instrumental gives us pleasing and unexpected textures including traces of brass. The video is as fun as you’d expect given the track.

To say Walker has had a chequered past is an understatement. Once in the throws of alcoholism, drug use, and depression, he somehow balanced it with raising children and releasing indie projects. Rock bottom came with a suicide attempt which resulted in two open heart surgeries.

He’s now healing, and released his first album under his own name in 2023 via RascalZ RecordZ. His upcoming EP, Where To Go And How To Get There, is set for release 13 June 2025. He says this of the EP:

“We built these tracks around Robert [Mitchell]’s drums which we pulled out of many live, in studio performances and gave each other the time to compose parts and hone existing parts to maximize their impact. Dan [Capaldi] wouldn’t let us move on to the next performance until we had the best track we were capable of.”

An Owl Hoots Your Name At Night is out now and you can give it a listen below.