On July 28, 2023, Merge Records will release “For Some Other Reason” b/w “Fair Warning” and “What Would You Say?” the debut of Mac Krol, the blistering combo of Mike Krol and Mac McCaughan. The collaboration began its life in 2015, when Krol and his bandmates Elliott Kozel, Phil Mahlstadt, and Michael Sienkowski decamped to San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone after recording Turkey, intending to turn “a handful of riffs and ideas” into a full record. “The plan was to take the rough mixes home and write lyrics to record them later,” Krol explains. “However, once I got home and listened to the songs, I quickly realized that most of them were in the wrong key for my voice. So I filed them away to deal with later, and eventually lost interest.” In 2020, stuck inside due to the pandemic, Krol rediscovered the tracks on an old hard drive and had time to try his hand at solving them. “To my surprise,” he says, “they sounded better than I remembered, but still didn't work with my voice. I emailed Mac the tracks and said if he was bored in quarantine, maybe he could write some words to sing on top of my instrumentals and possibly give them a second life. He said he hated writing lyrics and politely declined. A few days later, three songs showed up with completed lyrics and iconic Mac McCaughan singing and shredding all over them. I was blown away!”