We haven’t had a studio album from Minneapolis punk heroes Dillinger Four since 2008’s Civil War, but they’ve remained active playing shows, and now they’ve shared their first new music in 18 years (and it’s not an April Fool’s joke!). “Don’t Happy Be Worry” finds these masters of gritty, melodic punk doing what they’ve always done best, and according to a press release, it “will eventually live on a record that hasn’t been recorded yet.” Singer and guitarist Erik Funk says:
So it’s been something like 18 years since we released any new music, and the inescapable questions are why? And…why now?
The honest truth? I have no fucking idea. We’ve been active that whole time playing shows, and we never really stopped writing music; we just sort of stopped finishing music. We’ve never tried to do this band as some kind of a career, and so we’ve never felt the pressure that comes from that. We do feel extremely grateful that, for whatever reasons, people all over the world are still willing to come check us out when we’re playing and hoping to hear us do something new. If we’ve ever felt anything resembling pressure to do the band, it’s for that reason alone. The balance of the shit we’ve been doing in our lives, parenting, work, hobbies, etc., has just seemed to fall into place in the past couple years to where now there’s some room to get back to finishing some music. It feels good. It takes more time than it used to still. We can’t just drop everything for two weeks and make a whole album. Slowly but surely, though, we’ve now got a stack of some new stuff, and it’s time to start getting it out there. But as with all things Dillinger Four throughout our history, we reserve the right to do it how, when, and wherever we want.
Dillinger Four are on tour in Japan now and have a hometown Minneapolis show later this month. See all dates below.
DILLINGER FOUR: 2026 TOUR DATES
Thu Apr 02 Tokyo, Japan Live House Fever
Sat Apr 04 Tokyo, Japan Shelter
Sun Apr 05 Osaka, Japan Fandango
Sat Apr 18 Minneapolis, MN Modist Brewing