Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles

Alan Sparhawk was long the brilliant baritone singer and riveting guitarist of Low, a band that for many first meant slowcore but steadily found other, more cacophonous ways to scintillate; Trampled by Turtles is a contemporary bluegrass band, whose familiar harmonies and incisive songs have long made them a crossover favorite. What, then, are these two seemingly disparate acts doing together? Soon after Low’s Mimi Parker died in late 2022, her husband, Sparhawk, first returned to stage to sing Low’s “When I Go Deaf” with Trampled by Turtles, their string-band melee sounding out the sting he must have been feeling after his wife’s death. Both from Duluth, Minn., they had often shared stages and songs together—they offered friendship and fellow feeling when Sparhawk desperately needed it.

Several months after Sparhawk jumped on a tour bus with Trampled by Turtles to open for Willie Nelson, they rendezvoused in a wintry Minneapolis studio to cut nine songs that became one of 2025’s most surprising and transfixing collaborations. The exquisite and real ache of “Screaming Song,” the existential shrug of “Get Still,” the soul-exposing plea of “Don’t Take Your Light”: Sparhawk and the Turtles meet somewhere toward the middle of their respective fields when they play together, the band boosting imaginative songs of unflinching images with raw acoustic power. If this collaboration was initially about Sparhawk finding a new space and way to sing, it’s evolved into a rich and rapturous experience all its own.