Los Angeles-based experimental jazz collective High Pulp will release their new album Days in the Desert in peak sweltering summer heat on July 28. The titular desert is both literal and metaphorical: it's the Mojave Desert that the band powers through on their many DIY tours around the country, and the band's founder / drummer Bobby Granfelt perceives the desert as "a spiritual quest" as well. Amid the trials of our present moment, you must look within, relying solely on your own instincts to keep moving forward. "You're in the desert and it's a long, lonesome process and a lot of times you have to check yourself to ask 'Is this right? Is this good? Is it too out?'" he says.

High Pulp's Days in the Desert makes this vision come true, finding the West Coast band fully emerging into their own sound. Rooted in the jazz tradition while also smitten by indie-rock and electronic music, High Pulp was willing to grab from all these sounds at once to pursue something truly their own. Their third full-length album (following 2022's promising Anti- debut Pursuit of Ends), Days in the Desert reveals the band realizing their strengths, deepening their own bonds, and pushing all these skills into a thrilling new sonic vista all but unimaginable just a few years before.