If Pete Yorn tells you to calm down, don’t take it personally. He’s not talking to you—he’s talking to himself.
“That song is like the higher voice in my head telling my lower self to stop banging its head against the wall,” Yorn says about “Calm Down,” one of two lead singles from Caretakers, his first solo album in years. “It’s an internal dialogue. It’s not ‘calm down, you.’ It’s ‘calm down, me.’”
The imagery driving the new record—starting with a pill bottle on the cover—isn’t exactly subtle. But it’s not literal either. “Music is medicine,” he says. “Safe and effective medication.”
Yorn’s spent two decades crafting melancholy pop songs that sound like they were born on a late-night drive. Caretakers continues that streak—except this time he’s got company. The new LP is co-written and produced with Jackson Phillips of Day Wave, whom Yorn met at a birthday party where things got just loose enough.
“It was one of my first nights out since my kid was born,” he laughs. “My wife went home to relieve the babysitter, and I stayed out for one more drink. That’s when I met Jackson. We vibed immediately.” A few months later, Yorn found himself at Phillips’ studio with zero expectations. “By that afternoon, we were recording.”
The result was one of the most creatively fruitful periods of his career. “It was the most prolific time I’ve had in 20 years,” Yorn says. “I’d just told my brother I wasn’t feeling inspired, and two days later I was back in it. You never know when it’s gonna hit.”
Yorn’s always had a soft spot for collaboration. In recent years he’s teamed up with The Olms, Liz Phair (on a Pixies cover, no less), and even Scarlett Johansson, with whom he’s released two EPs. “I think I was solitary for so long, I just started craving other perspectives,” he says.
But even with new partnerships, he remains as hands-on as ever—trading instrumental duties back and forth with Phillips like two kids building a fort out of sound. “It’s my favorite way to record,” he says.
The videos for “Calm Down” and “Can’t Stop You” are family affairs too. His cousin Max directed both—the former a dreamy New Jersey transit montage, the latter an unexpectedly poignant reel of vintage skateboarding wipeouts. The video for “Calm Down” even features another cousin, unknowingly swimming with sharks while posing for what he thought was a still photo. “He didn’t realize he was being filmed,” Yorn chuckles. “Looks like Jesus, just zonked out underwater.”
Despite the homespun approach, Caretakers is hardly small. Thematically, it's rooted in Yorn’s ongoing grappling with how to help—or not help—the people he loves. “It’s about the frustration of not being able to save someone,” he says. “Some people you just can’t reach. But that frustration still gets me writing.”
And writing continues to save him. “The songs don’t change,” Yorn says. “We change. You go back to an old song and it hits you differently. It reminds you that you’ve been through hard times before—and you got through them.”
Twenty years into a career that started with musicforthemorningafter, Pete Yorn isn’t slowing down. He’s still searching, still collaborating, still writing sad songs with major chords, still building little three-minute sanctuaries.
“I love that juxtaposition,” he says. “A bit of melancholy wrapped in something that feels like hope.”
Listen to the interview above and check out the tracks below!
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