King Tuff shares “Tell Me,” the third single from his anticipated new album, Smalltown Stardust, out January 27th via Sub Pop. The pop gem, which features backing vocals from the album’s co-writer and co-producer SASAMI, perfectly encapsulates Kyle Thomas’ knack for melody and songwriting prowess.

“Almost every song in the world is about love, yet somehow there’s still not enough love songs,” says Thomas. “And if you took all the love songs in the world and added them to all the love songs that haven’t been written yet, well, there still wouldn’t be enough. There’s always room for more love and there’s always room for more love songs. Love is an endless well, you can do love songs about people, nature, passion, frustration, animals, joy, madness. Most of my songs are love songs, and I like it that way. But I’m still not satisfied! I want more! I want more love! And I want you to have more love! So here’s ‘Tell Me,’ a love song.”

Smalltown Stardust is “an album about love and nature and youth,” Thomas explains. It’s a spiritual, tender and ultimately joyous record that might come as a shock to those with only a passing knowledge of the artist’s back catalog, as evidenced by the album’s new single “Tell Me.” On Smalltown Stardust, Thomas takes us on his journey to a place where past and present collide, where he can be a dreamer in love with all that he sees. Images of his youth abound.

King Tuff’s 2023 North American tour kicks off March 1st in San Diego, CA and wraps April 7th at Joshua Tree, CA with a show at Pappy and Harriets. All dates below.

SMALLTOWN STARDUST TOUR DATES:

March 1 San Diego, CA @ Casbah

March 3 Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room

March 4 San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel

March 6  Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios

March 7  Vancouver, BC @ The Wise Hall

March 8  Seattle, WA @ Neumos

March 10  Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge

March 11  Denver, CO @  Globe Hall

March 15  Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall Upstairs

March 17  Nashville, TN @ The Basement East

March 18  Atlanta, GA @ The Earl

March 19  Durham, NC @ The Pinhook

March 21  Washington, DC @ DC9

March 22 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s

March 23  Boston, MA @ The Sinclair

March 24  Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere Hall

March 25  Brattleboro, VT @ The Stone Church

March 28  Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz PDB

March 29  Toronto, ON @ Horseshoe Tavern

March 31  Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle

April 1  Minneapolis, MN @ The Turf Club

April 3  Kansas City, MO @ The Record Bar

April 5  Santa Fe, NM @ Meow Wolf

April 6  Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge

April 7 Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy and Harriet’s

“There are times in our life when we feel magic in the air. When new love arrives, or we find ourselves lost in a moment of creation with others who share our vision. A sense that: this is who I want to be. This is what I want to share.” 

It’s a fleeting feeling and one that Kyle Thomas, the singer-songwriter who records and performs as King Tuff, found himself longing for in the spring of 2020. 

But knowing he couldn’t simply recreate this time in his life at will, Thomas—who hails from Brattleboro, Vermont—set out to write a love letter to those cherished moments of inspiration and to the small town that formed him. The one where he first nurtured his songwriting impulses, bouncing ideas off other like-minded artists. The kind of place where the changing of the seasons always delivered a sense of perspective and fresh artistic inspiration. Where he felt a deeper connection with nature and sense of community that had once been so close at hand. 

“I wanted to make an album to remind myself that life is magical,” he reflects. 

While so much of Smalltown Stardust invokes idealized traces and places of Thomas’s past, the album’s recording process made his communal vision a reality. Thomas’s Los Angeles home in 2020 formed a micro-scene of sorts, with housemates Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) and Sasami Ashworth recording their own heralded albums (2021’s Fun House and 2022’s Squeeze, respectively) at the same time. A shared spirit dominated an era spent largely on the premises, with Thomas serving as engineer and contributor to both records, and Ashworth working as co-producer on Smalltown Stardust. Thomas describes the time with a fitting metaphor: “I’ve always thrived around other people making things. You want to bloom with each other.” Ashworth’s contributions are vital to the album: she co-wrote a majority of the record and contributed vocals, arrangements, and instrumentation to each song. As Thomas notes, “I tried to follow her vision a lot. It helps to open your world to collaborators. You always get something completely different than you would have expected.”

In the end, Smalltown Stardust is not merely a nostalgia trip. In making the record, Thomas not only conjured a special time in his life, he found new inspiration, surrounded by a small circle of collaborators and a sense of love and wonder for nature. If the first King Tuff record was content to merely state Thomas was no longer dead, Smalltown Stardust is a paean to what that life means. A statement of belief and a hymnal to the magic still to behold all around us. “I’m a different person now than I was 20 years ago when I first started it. But oddly, when I first started the band, it was more like this,” he says. Which is to say, things have come full circle.

1. Love Letters To Plants

2. How I Love

3. A Meditation

4. Portrait of God

5. Smalltown Stardust

6. Pebbles in a Stream

7. Tell Me

8. Rock River

9. The Bandits of Blue Sky

10. Always Find Me

11. The Wheel