Kelley Stoltz - Writing The Thread Kelley Stoltz

This October, San Francisco songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kelley Stoltz returns with Writing the Thread, his 21st album and his second full-length release of 2026, arriving to coincide with a new run of live dates across the UK and Europe.

For more than two decades, Stoltz has quietly built one of the most distinctive and prolific catalogs in American independent music. A songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and inveterate home-recording enthusiast, he has followed his own path—moving easily between psychedelic pop, post-punk, garage rock, glam, folk and the melodic pull of classic songwriting, while somehow always sounding unmistakably like himself.

Raised in Michigan and based in San Francisco since the late 1990s, Stoltz first attracted attention with his early home recordings, particularly 2001’s Antique Glow, originally self-released in a tiny run of hand-painted LPs. His growing reputation eventually led to a long association with Sub Pop Records. Later releases appeared on Jack White’s Third Man Records, John Dwyer’s Castle Face Records and a succession of independent labels around the world.

Throughout it all, Stoltz has continued to operate his own peculiar musical workshop—writing, playing, recording and following ideas wherever they happen to wander. His work has been lauded by MOJO, Uncut, BBC 6 Music, Triple J Australia and The New York Times, while his home studio has become a place to produce and record a long list of fellow travelers. Stoltz also spent several years playing rhythm guitar with his longtime heroes Echo & the Bunnymen and serves as West Coast drummer for Robyn Hitchcock. He is also the host of “Vinelands,” a Bay Area music specialty show on legendary radio station KEXP.

Coming just months after May’s If You Don't Know Me, Buy Now, Writing the Thread captures Stoltz in an especially prolific stretch, still chasing songs, sounds and unexpected turns more than twenty albums into his career.

“I got the title from asking my wife, when she was typing away into her phone, ‘What are you doing?’ and she’d often reply, ‘Oh, just writing the thread’—her friends’ group about stuff. It seemed like a poetic title, and it tied into the way us small-fry artists are essentially writing the songs as communications with our small group of followers.”

Writing the Thread finds the melodic immediacy of Stoltz’s earliest recordings meeting the sharper edges, strange textures and restless experimentation that have increasingly colored his work.

Writing the Thread arrives in October 2026, released in the UK and Europe by Agitated Records and in the USA by Dandy Boy Records, to coincide with a month-long UK and European tour.