Panda Bear and Sonic Boom are taking their next record partly offline. Noah Lennox and Pete Kember will release A ? of WHEN on July 10, with Domino listing the Reset follow-up for exclusive limited LP, CD, cassette, and download formats.
The no-streaming piece is the hook and, honestly, the most Panda Bear/Sonic Boom possible version of a rollout in 2026. Pitchfork reports that the album will debut through physical formats and download but skip streaming services entirely. In the statement quoted by Pitchfork, Lennox and Kember point listeners toward radio, live shows, listening parties, Q&As, and “real life interactions,” ending with the very clean mission statement: “IRL not URL.”
That framing could turn corny fast in lesser hands, but this pair has earned a little benefit of the doubt. Reset, their 2022 album together, worked because it treated old pop fragments like living material instead of thrift-store wallpaper. Domino’s description of A ? of WHEN says the new record is built on loops of harp from Mary Lattimore, steel-drum sequences, webs of pedal steel, and even bits of a mariachi band — sounds chosen as a deliberate break from Reset rather than an attempt to repeat it.
Pitchfork also notes contributions from Lattimore and Daniel O’Sullivan. The first single is available as a download through Domino, and the album announcement follows the record-store-only “Graveyard” / “Lucky Charm” 7-inch, which the band’s statement frames as part of the same low-online, high-contact pivot.
The A ? of WHEN tracklist is: “Never givin’ in,” “Lucky Charm,” “Revive him,” “Something like dreaming,” “A ? of WHEN,” “Pray to you,” “Be the bridge,” “Like a moth to a flame,” “Somethin’ that lasts,” and “Graveyard.”