It’s no easy thing to sustain a band for more than 20 years. To come together and nurture an artistic project across two decades is a statement of belief: in oneself, in one’s bandmates, in the profound connections produced by the creative process, and in the richness of the world around us—since all art is a result of having noticed what it feels like to live here, and the drive to make sense of that feeling.

Canadian indie-rock veterans Wintersleep belong to this group of artists. At this stage in their career, the celebrated band’s five members—principal vocalist and guitarist Paul Murphy, guitarist Tim D’Eon, keyboardist Jon Samuel, bassist Chris Bell, and drummer Loel Campbell—are possessed of a deep gratitude and humility that accompany any creatives who get to make a life-long go of making art with the people they love. But there are still wonderful mysteries and shadowy corners of experience that they have yet to uncover.

With seven critically acclaimed full-length records behind them, and six years passed since their 2019 LP In The Land Of, Wintersleep are stirring again. By the summer of 2024, the band had remotely demoed a collection of songs written both before and after the pandemic, but they needed to be sure the tracks had a pulse in person. They convened at a studio in the Mojave Desert to track them live, together in the room, and mostly without a click track, letting their 24-year-old collective intuitions guide and shape the music through pushes and pulls in tempo. The sounds they created evidence a renewed vitality and energy: The band’s branches of prog-, indie-, folk-, and alternative-rock are in full bloom, stretching skyward with grateful, open, curious hearts.

Wishing Moon, the band’s eighth album, will arrive on March 27th, 2026 via Dine Alone. Lead single “I Got A Feeling” is a shot across the bow announcing this new era. Palm-muted guitar, humming bass, and motorik drums drive out of the gate. By the time Murphy’s familiar tenor cuts in, the band is tensing toward full gear. The leash comes off as the chorus rips across the sky with uncommon guitar grit and presence—immediate evidence of the band’s up-close, off-the-floor recording process. It’s a glorious garage-rock romp, a perfect alchemy of the jubilation and grandeur that mark Wintersleep’s work. Murphy’s words swell with optimism: “I got a feeling the well won’t ever dry/I got a feeling I’m luckier tonight/Despite knowing that death won’t go away/I got a feeling that I’m forever changed.”

Ironically, “I Got A Feeling” was likely the last song demoed for the record at the band’s rehearsal space in Great Village, Nova Scotia. Out in the desert near Pioneertown, with the help of producer Nicolas Vernhes (The War on Drugs, Spoon), it grew into something stronger and more potent. For Murphy, it captured a moment of excited anticipation: “That moment when you know that someone special you care about, cares about you too,” he says.

Wishing Moon crackles with the energy of that sort of reinvigoration. The opening title track throbs with a Wurlitzer electric piano before bass and drums set off at a steady clip, setting a dreamy kraut-rock scene that builds, slowly, to a crescendo of hammered keys and soaring guitars while Murphy cries on the chorus: “Temperamental, I’m alive, I’m alone/Transcendental, I’m alive, I’m alone.” “Stranger Now” follows, with heavy desert-rock chording and sand-smoothed fuzz leads. (D’Eon attributes the record’s atmosphere and macabre grooves to the Mojave, famously channeled in the ominous, titanic riffing of bands like Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age.) “The band’s always at its strongest when there’s a fundamental groove that’s rolling along,” remarks Campbell. “I just felt a natural gravitation when we got into the room, like this propulsion and relentlessness. There’s a certain meditation within the grooves.”

“Wait for the Tide” recalls pre-Wintersleep days, even, when Murphy and D’Eon created post-hardcore and prog-rock chaos in their high school band Kary. “My Mind Always” centers on a hypnotic, off-kilter acoustic riff, an unsettling, stoned sway of a love song. “Abyss” is an alt-rock endtimes anthem, feeling like it’s ready to pull apart at the seams at any moment despite its major-key gallop: “We’re living in the abyss now/In the life affirming bliss!” Murphy sings.

For Murphy, the record demonstrates a band that still takes chances. “We wanted to shake it up and do something more challenging,” he explains. That desire is partly why they chose to work with Vernhes, a producer they’d never created with. “We needed that energy of not knowing,” he continues. “I remember thinking that it should be uncomfortable, because it’s like getting in touch with who you are again, individually and as a group. Songs are really intimate things, and getting a song right on a record is a really intimate process. I think of collaboration with producers as a mirror, and felt especially in this case, it revealed a lot. Most importantly, I think Wishing Moon just has this living, breathing quality.”