New Earlimart album due July 1

Earlimart's announcement this morning on its MySpace website couldn't have come as more of a surprise -- the band has a new album finished and slated for release on July 1.

"It's done, in the can and delivered," front man Aaron Espinoza says of "Hymn & Her," which will be released on Majordomo (an imprint of Shout! Factory) less than a year after the group's first album for that imprint, last August's "Mentor Tormentor." "We just want to be relentless, keep making stuff."

"Mentor Tormentor" was more than two years in the making, but after touring behind that record Espinoza got together with principal collaborator Ariana Murray. "I told her, 'It's just you and me, we're going to get an engineer, reserve the studio and record 10 songs.' ... We didn't want to do the whole wait-three-years-to-make-another-record thing," he says.

The engineer was versatile multi-instrumentalist Andrew Lynch, who also plays keyboards and brass on the album, the band's sixth. "He's a talented dude," Espinoza says. "We're lucky to have him."

No new songs posted yet, but I'll let you know.

Photo of Earlimart's Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray by Darrin Noble

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Another local note: Silversun Pickups debuted their new, Joaquin Phoenix-directed video for "Little Lover's So Polite" on MTV2. You can check it out here. Update: Here it is: