Dehd kicks off 2024 by announcing their fifth studio album, Poetry, due this May via Fat Possum Records. Alongside the announcement, Dehd shares the lead single and accompanying music video for “Mood Ring,” a fuzzy, crushed-out bop about falling for a boy on a motorcycle. It’s the tone-setter for all that Poetry is set to deliver as the band shows their ability to weld a variety of musical directions inside a concise and catchy sub-three-minute package. Following the whirlwind success of Dehd’s fourth album, Blue Skies, and hit single “Bad Love,” the band turned a writing session into a road trip. First stop, Kempf’s off-grid Earthship in Taos, New Mexico where they chopped wood to stay warm and worked until they ran out of daylight. They then travelled north to a borrowed cabin on the Puget Sound where surrounded by chilly waters, time was marked only by the movement of the tides. “Eating, Sleeping, Breathing, Living – our only purpose was to write,” Kempf recalled. This was the first time the band traveled to distinctly notable locations to write and be inspired. Leaving Chicago proved to be a watershed moment. They finalized the songs that became Poetry back in snowy Chicago in the warehouse space they’ve called home for nearly a decade. The band tapped Ziyad Asrar of Whitney to co-produce the album alongside Dehd’s own Jason Balla at Palisade Studio, marking the first time the trio has collaborated with anyone outside of the band during the recording process. These experiences, coupled with a moment of inspiration from falling in love with Charles Bukowski’s self-affirming poem “The Laughing Heart,” gave birth to Dehd’s fifth album and a new direction—to live life like Poetry.