Avey Tare

More than a quarter-century ago, Dave Portner, who would soon acquire the nom de plume Avey Tare, began collaborating with a few teenage friends he’d made in Maryland. The goal wasn’t to have a band, per se, but to explore sound and song, to sing inside drones and acoustic clatters and have fun as friends. Over several years, those collaborations coalesced into Animal Collective, a band that would not only change the scope and shape of indie rock but also help reinforce ideas that newness was the ultimate goal, that creation was the ultimate pursuit. In fact, despite producing some of the most beloved songs of the century, Animal Collective has never been a band to play the hits, to revisit the past simply out of capitalistic or nostalgic subservience. Alone, together, or in assorted combinations, the four members of Animal Collective have made a mountain of art, from the perfectly poppy to the delightfully obtuse. Avey Tare has consistently found the alluring middle.

Working in a sylvan studio outside of Asheville, N.C., Portner has maintained a spectacularly prolific pace. He paired with Animal Collective’s Geologist to release one of 2026’s most beguiling debuts as Croz Boyce. In 2025, he issued an EP and LP from a new trio called Ellicott Hooligan, the tracks mischievous and dreamy. He last issued a solo album as Avey Tare, 7s, in 2023, a mix of lysergic acoustic delights, broken boom-bap pop songs, and ascendant anthems, his voice sometimes pitched with unexpected urgency. It also contained “The Musical,” a sort of thesis statement for his artistic worldview: “When the breath wants to come out, and the note begins,” he sang over a trippy beat, a smile almost audible in his tone, “I start to feel much better.” Late in 2025, Portner started an Instagram hiatus so he could focus, he said, “on a lot of new music … in the works.” That is, of course, not new for Portner.