Acclaimed Olympia, WA country/punk maximalists Pigeon Pit have surprise-released their new album Leash Aggression on Ernest Jenning Record Co. 

Pigeon Pit is the self-described “maximalist journaling” project of Olympia frontwoman Lomes Oleander, whose scrapbook approach to songwriting pieces together vivid vignettes of self-acceptance and survival. Her lyrics trace a life lived across the anarchic punk scene of surf-town Santa Cruz, chemical escapism in Seattle basements, cross-country freight train rides through queer counterculture, and even time spent teaching kindergarten.

After a debilitating injury in 2020, Oleander expanded Pigeon Pit into a full band featuring violin and pedal steel on Feather River Canyon Blues, channeling psychedelic country and DIY pop-punk influences that recall Gram Parsons, The Weakerthans, and P.S. Eliot. With songs that explore queerness, grief, attachment, and political struggle, Pigeon Pit has maintained a fierce DIY ethos, packing punk house basements and generator shows while also performing on NPR’s Tiny Desk and touring with Laura Jane Grace and AJJ.

Leash Aggression marks Pigeon Pit’s second full-length release of 2025, following Crazy Arms, which blended field recordings, laughter, and layered instrumentation into a dense emotional collage. By contrast, Leash Aggression embraces a raw, stripped-down sound that lets the songs speak for themselves, showcasing the band’s evolution as a live unit. It’s also their most explicitly political work to date, an immersive exercise in world-building where possibility outweighs despair.

As Oleander puts it, the album proposes “love for humanity, rather than fear of certain futures, as a political motivator,” and sees “hope as an invitation to act in the face of bleakness, instead of something made impossible by it.”

There’s no slow build-up this time, Leash Aggression is out everywhere now via Ernest Jenning Record Co.