Kevin Morby announces Little Wide Open, shares Javelin single and video

Kevin Morby announced Little Wide Open on Feb. 11 and released “Javelin” as the album’s lead single the same day, setting up a spring return for one of the more durable songwriters working outside pop’s center of gravity. The album was scheduled to arrive May 15 via Dead Oceans, with Aaron Dessner of The National producing and playing on the record.

Morby has built that career in steady increments. Little Wide Open is his eighth solo studio album, following Harlem River in 2013, Still Life in 2014, Singing Saw in 2016, City Music in 2017, Oh My God in 2019, Sundowner in 2020 and This Is a Photograph in 2022. Before his solo run, he fronted Woods and The Babies, and his biography traces his path from Lubbock, Texas, to Kansas City, Missouri, where his formative years unfolded in the city’s warehouse, punk basement and loft scenes.

That Kansas City background remains central to how Morby presents himself and the music he makes. CBS News has likened his work to Bob Dylan and Tom Petty, a comparison that fits the plainspoken, melodic strain of his writing and the way he has kept releasing records at a regular pace over more than a decade. The title Little Wide Open also reaches back toward that geography and mindset. On his official site, Morby said the phrase reflects his Midwest origins and evokes “the big sky, the small lives,” along with “the land, the people, and the uncertainty of the future.”

The “Javelin” video extends that world with a cast pulled from music and comedy circles. Morby appears alongside comedian Caleb Hearon, with cameos from Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and Kansas City organizer Tara Raghuveer. The album itself brings in a wide circle of collaborators, including Justin Vernon, Katie Gavin, Lucinda Williams, Meg Duffy, Oliver Hill, Rachel Baiman, Stuart Bogie, Tim Carr, Andrew Barr, Benjamin Lanz, Colin Croom and Tom Moth, giving the project the feel of a working musician’s network rather than a star-driven campaign. That approach, grounded in place, collaboration and repetition, has become part of Morby’s identity as much as any single song.