Hippo Campus and Soul Asylum share new music ahead of Yacht Club Festival

As the Minnesota Yacht Club Festival gets underway, two of the festival's local acts have unveiled new tracks from their forthcoming albums.

Both Hippo Campus and Soul Asylum have dropped new songs and details about their upcoming albums ahead of the biggest music festival to launch in the Twin Cities in more than a decade.

Hippo Campus previously announced it would release new music this year through Psychic Hotline, the label run by Sylvan Esso. On Tuesday, the band shared "Paranoid," a catchy reverb-laced song that will be the lead single from the album Flood , set to arrive Sept. 20.

The video for that lead track was filmed at the James J. Hill Center in St. Paul , not far from the St. Paul Conservatory of Performing Arts, where the band went to school.

The album was co-produced by long-time collaborator Caleb Wright and Brad Cook, who played in DeYarmond Edison with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and was also one-third of Megafaun with his brother Phil and drummer Joe Westerlund.

On Wednesday, Soul Asylum released "High Road," the ramshackle first song from the album Slowly But Shirley , an homage to pioneering drag racer Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowney, a childhood hero of frontman Dave Pirner . The record, scheduled to be released at an undisclosed date this fall, will be the band's first release since 2020's Hurry Up and Wait .

The album was produced by Steve Jordan, who collaborated with the band more than three decades ago when he produced their 1990 album, And the Horse They Rode In On .

Both bands take the Yacht Club stage at Harriet Island on Saturday, along with The Hold Steady, who are sort of local adjacent.

Post-Yacht Club, Soul Asylum will play a string of nostalgia-rich shows for '90s rock fans alongside Stone Temple Pilots, Live, and the Juliana Hatfield Three. No shows have been announced in Minnesota at this time.