Minneapolis alternative rock band Perry Project announce the release of their fourth major album, Animals That Trusted You, out Friday, June 26, 2026. Written throughout 2024 by singer-songwriter Tracy Perry Jr. and guitarist Stafford Christensen, and produced by Owen Sartori, the album is Perry Project’s most intimate and emotionally direct work to date — a record that sits unflinchingly in the aftermath of broken trust, examining the silence left behind when relationships fall apart.
“Animals That Trusted You” explores what happens after the damage is done — not just between people, but within yourself. Shaped by real experiences of heartbreak, divorce, family separation, and the lingering sense of powerlessness that comes from watching painful events unfold both in the world around you and in your own backyard, the sessions produced something raw, atmospheric, and deeply felt. Guitars move between warm melodies and uneasy, off-balance tones shaped by unconventional tunings, creating a subtle instability that mirrors the emotional terrain the album maps. The arrangements give space for feeling to settle rather than resolve, resulting in a record that refuses the comfort of easy answers.
Lead single “Callous” opens the album and sets its emotional compass — previewing a band that has grown both sonically and personally with every release, and arriving with something to say that could only come from this particular chapter of Tracy’s life.
“Animals That Trusted You” is Perry Project’s fourth major release, following their 2022 EP Liars, Fires and their previous albums Can’t Steal Soul (2014) and Regardless of Everything, Are You Okay? (2019). It is mixed by Owen Sartori, Adrian Bushby (MUSE), and Math Bishop (Taylor Swift), and mastered by Frank Arkwright of Abbey Road Studios — whose credits include Coldplay, The Killers, The Verve, and The Smiths.
Tracy Perry Jr. grew up in Ridgecrest, California — a remote town in the Mojave Desert where long stretches of empty highway kept the world at a distance. With little to do and endless quiet, imagination became essential. He spent those long, hot days coming up with songs in his head for the people he observed, recording homemade radio shows with his siblings, and dissecting music the way only a future songwriter can: isolating bass lines, guitar parts, and vocal harmonies, studying how songs were constructed before he had the language to describe what he was doing.
The revelation came in high school. Hearing Oasis’s Champagne Supernova for the first time, something clicked. He picked up a guitar and immediately started writing. A friend’s invitation to open a show — with no material ready — pushed him to write a handful of songs in a hurry. Nervous and shaking, he performed for a crowd of about ten people, discovered something he couldn’t ignore, and never looked back.
He relocated to Seattle, launched Perry Project on Myspace in 2007, and spent the following years writing constantly — crafting over sixty songs and finding in songwriting something more enduring than any original collaborative plan. After enlisting in the U.S. Air Force, he spent deployment days off writing and playing guitar, and continued performing relentlessly while stationed in Tampa. In 2012 he moved to Minneapolis, invested his military savings in his debut album, and connected with producer Davide Raso to bring years of material to life. Can’t Steal Soul arrived in 2014, mastered by Joe LaPorta, known for his work with David Bowie, Foo Fighters, and Imagine Dragons.
The addition of guitarist Stafford Christensen — a Minnesota native influenced by Pat Metheny, Sting, and David Gilmour — expanded Perry Project into a full band and transformed the project’s dynamic. That collaboration deepened through Regardless of Everything, Are You Okay?, the pandemic-era Liars, Fires EP, and now into the intimately constructed sessions that produced Animals That Trusted You.
