You Sing Like You're Joking

On Palehound’s new album, You Sing Like You’re Joking, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist El Kempner returns with an introspective collection of songs, spinning universal yarns out of deeply personal moments. Produced by Kempner, Julian Fader (Ava Luna), and Katie Von Schleicher (Frankie Cosmos), the nine-track project finds Kempner surveying the tectonic shifts in their life and career since starting out in Boston’s DIY scene in the early 2010s.

Much of You Sing Like You’re Joking grapples with broken and distanced friendships. Its title, a lyric pulled from opening track “Incisions”, captures Kempner’s approach to relationships and desire to connect more deeply.