BOYO—the artist moniker of LA-based multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Robert Tilden (they/them)—today announced their new album Alone Together In Los Angeles will be released on December 11th, 2020, via Park the Van Records. Showcasing the LP’s dichotomy of anxious lyrics resting in sunny sonics, the blissful chill of lead single “Feel” belies its distressed inception: “This song is a back and forth, insecurities flying,” explains Tilden. “Not wanting to feel when feelings are overtaking every inch of you.”

On June 2020’s Where Have All My Friends Gone?—which earned praise from NPR Music, FLOOD Magazine, The Alternative, American Songwriter, LA Record, AllMusic (4/5), and more—BOYO gave us a glimpse into the darker side of their psyche as they exposed the loneliness and pain caused by their 2017 health scare. Tilden was eventually diagnosed with and treated for an acute form of frontal lobe epilepsy, but the intense fear and uncertainty of that year resulted in a period of self-isolation during which most of Where Have All My Friends Gone? was written and recorded. That album was an exercise in catharsis—it was the button that needed pressing to disengage the boosters. Alone Together in Los Angeles is its 12-track follow-up that reunites us with Tilden’s brighter side.

Where Have All My Friends Gone? and Alone Together in Los Angeles highlight Tilden's impressive growth as a songwriter and range as a musician. These songs were all born around the same time and the lyrics tackle equally complex feelings, but the music of Alone Together in Los Angeles has more groove, more funk, and a touch more whimsy. While Where Have All My Friends Gone? was influenced by the lush melancholy of songwriters like Bradford Cox (Deerhunter/Atlas Sound) and Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse), Alone Together in Los Angeles finds inspiration in the back-and-forth piano and guitar stylings of John and Yoko's Plastic Ono Band and the playful, compressed production of hip-hop luminary Madlib.