Video: Dawes, ‘Who Do You Think You’re Talking To?’

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Dawes (Photo by Clara Balzary)

It’s been 11 years (next month) since L.A. rockers Dawes launched dual residencies that fueled the success of their debut album “North Hills” and cemented them as Southern California favorites.

Six albums later, their take on Everyman classic rock has aged well — familiar, earnest, relatable music that wears like denim.

The quartet — Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith, Wylie Gerber and Lee Pardini — today announced that their seventh album, “Good Luck With Whatever,” will be out Oct. 2. It’s their first release for Rounder Records.

“In the past, I’ve definitely been more precious about the way I wanted the songs to sound, but that’s never as fun,” Taylor Goldsmith says of the album. “The music we make is everyone’s mode of expression, and the other guys all have chops that I don’t have and never will. The fact that we’re able to lean on each other and celebrate each other as individuals just makes us so much more excited about getting to play together in this band.”

The first single “Who Do you Think You’re Talking To?” is a saxophone short of a blue-jeaned Springsteen, the kind of tune you blare on the open road. “This song is about the way we bring our baggage with us as we move away from traumatic experiences and relationships,” Goldsmith says. “And the irony of sometimes our newer partners needing to be part of the processing more so than the folks who caused the trouble in the first place. It’s also about the other side of that coin — trying to assess a situation but knowing when not to take it personally and also finding a way to avoid over-analyzing.

“As a band, it was the first time we’ve ventured into certain grooves/arrangements for our tunes, so it was fun to push ourselves, see what felt natural and what we could get away with.”

The album was produced by six-time Grammy winner Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell) at Nashville’s RCA Studio A. Caitlin Gerard directs the video.

In June, Dawes released “Live From Richmond, VA,” a digital album with proceeds going to Reform Jails LA and Black Lives Matter LA.

||| Watch: The video for “Who Do you Think You’re Talking To?”

||| Previously: “Living in the Future”