Jim James has never been one to sit still. The My Morning Jacket founder, three-time GRAMMY nominee, and perennial sonic wanderer has announced Wowed Out, his first solo album in eight years, due out Friday, August 28 via ATO Records. Consider it the antidote to doomscrolling you didn’t know you needed.

Alongside the announcement, James has shared the album’s first single, “Come Again,” a shimmering, forward-tilting slice of soulful psychedelia that started its life as a cue for a scene set inside — and this is not a joke — a teddy bear factory. From those unlikely beginnings, the track evolved into a kaleidoscopic meditation on resilience in the face of chaos, complete with an official music video by W.G. Rickel, who conjures the whole thing to life using analog videographic illusions.

Watch the official video for “Come Again” here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Jim+James+Come+Again+Official+Video

“‘Come Again’ came from feeling discouraged by how much things are changing in directions I don’t agree with, but trying to remember that there’s still so much beauty to be experienced,” James says. “You’ve got to just keep going and keep trying again and again and again to find joy.”

A Dream Rebuilt From the Archives

Wowed Out — a phrase James coined to describe the sensory overload of modern life — has one of the more fascinating origin stories in recent memory. Produced entirely by James, the album took shape in the fall of 2025 when he began digging through a stash of recordings he’d made in the early 2010s with longtime friend and award-winning composer Brian Reitzell, best known for scoring Sofia Coppola films like Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides. The material had been originally composed for two major film-scoring projects and then quietly shelved.

“For years I kept returning to all this music we’d made and couldn’t figure out what to do with it,” James says. “But for some reason, last year everything started flowing in a really beautiful way.”

The result is his fifth solo LP and arguably his most immersive, mixed by James alongside GRAMMY-winning engineer Emily Lazar (David Bowie, David Byrne, Beck). Tracks like “Lost Child” and the folk-rock reverie “Hands On” make a radically sincere case for tenderness as resistance, nature as refuge, and awe as a counterforce to dread. It’s less a record than a fully-realized world.

Wowed Out Tracklist

1. Baby Dear
2. Hands On
3. Come Again
4. Lost Child
5. Home (Green)
6. We Love Our Life
7. Wowed Out
8. Whole Heart (Into It)
9. Rewind It
10. Your Door

Wes Anderson at the Bowl, and a Solo Song Summit

Before the album lands, James will link up with an absolutely stacked lineup — Beck, Jackson Browne, Bill Murray, Britt Daniel, and more — for Music from the Films of Wes Anderson, three nights at the Hollywood Bowl on July 10, 11, and 12. Then on August 28, the same day Wowed Out arrives, he’ll play a solo acoustic headline performance at Park City, Utah’s Song Summit 2026 at The Marquis on Main Street.

“There’ve been times in my life where I’ve felt lost or depressed, but music has always been the thing that pulls me back,” James says. “When I think about making this album, it almost feels like I was in some kind of dream and now I’m trying to remember what the dream was about. The whole thing brought me a lot of joy and comfort while I was making it, and I hope it brings everyone else a little joy and comfort too.”

Pre-order and pre-save Wowed Out now, and if you needed permission to put your phone down and stare at a tree for a while — Jim James is officially granting it.