The kids are crazy about a little band called Pinegrove. 

The Montclair, NJ-based indie rockers have earned rave reviews on the festival circuit this summer, and we recently sung their praises on this very podcast. They’re a little twangy, a little emo, a little punk, and altogether adept at parlaying it all into life-affirming emotional catharsis. So we tracked down frontman Evan Stephens Hall at New York’s Panorama Festival last weekend. 

“We have been -- on and off at our place in upstate New York -- recording and playing shows,” Hall says, reaffirming that the follow-up to last year’s Cardinal LP is indeed on the way, and Pinegrove is looking at March 2018 as an early target date and offered some other details on the new music. It's also going to be "a little longer" than Cardinal, which had, alas, eight tracks. Now we're talkin'.

“The album’s pretty close to being finished but I need to do vocals still, which is the most stressful part,” the frontman explains. He also clues us in on the new music’s lyrical content. 

“[I’ve] been exploring physical geometry and communication and light a lot -- lightness, darkness,” Hall says. “I think this is an album about depression in a certain way, but finding beauty in a word that’s sometimes very tense or challenging to move through.” 

Other topics include Montclair, NJ’s underrated live music scene, why Pinegrove inspires such passionate fandom, and what to call those fans -- #Grovers? #PineNuts? Listen to the ‘cast below:

The episode also includes a check-in with Billboard staffers Lyndsey Havens and Dan Rys. In the opening minutes, go behind the scenes of their Panorama fest experience with host Chris Payne, including discussion of Frank Ocean’s already-legendary headlining set, Solange’s mesmerizing performance right before it, and much more. 

#AlternativeFacts is a weekly Billboard podcast devoted to all things alternative music. Click here to subscribe to the #AlternativeFacts Podcast on iTunes. Let us know what you think on Twitter (@cpayneonaplane) and by rating the podcast on iTunes.