Song Of The Day: “Insomnia” by Crooked Fingers
After 15 years of dormancy, Eric Bachmann has officially dusted off the Crooked Fingers moniker for Swet Deth (released on Feb. 27, 2026), an album whose title is as much a mission statement as it is a callback to his son’s macabre childhood drawings.
In the grand evolution of the band, Swet Deth feels like the ultimate “full circle” moment. If 2011’s Breaks in the Armor was a sparse, solitary retreat, this new record is a crowded room. Bachmann has spent the last decade and a half oscillating between solo folk and the high-octane reunion of Archers of Loaf, but Swet Deth captures a hybrid energy that only Crooked Fingers can manage. It’s more collaborative than anything in the back catalog, pulling in heavy hitters like Matt Berninger and Sharon Van Etten. It feels like a veteran songwriter realizing that mortality is a much easier pill to swallow when you have a super-talented backing band to help bring your songs to life.
The record is surprisingly vibrant for something so obsessed with the “end of the line.” It’s an album that acknowledges the heart attacks (both literal and metaphorical) of the past few years but chooses to respond with power-pop hooks and pedal steel instead of just more gloom. Swet Deth is a rare comeback that doesn’t try to reclaim youth, but rather finds a way to make middle-aged reckoning sound like a celebration. It’s a record for anyone who has ever looked at a graveyard and thought, “Well, at least the grass is green.”
Among a track list filled with star-studded duets, “Insomnia” is my favorite track because it feels like the purest distillation of the Crooked Fingers spirit. While “Cold Waves” and “Haunted” benefit from their shiny guest spots, “Insomnia” is where Bachmann reminds us that he can still command a room with nothing but his cured-meat vocals and a sense of mounting dread. With its jerky syncopated beat, the song perfectly captures the specific, itchy anxiety of the small hours. It doesn’t romanticize the lack of sleep; it treats it like a physical weight. The way the intensity continually ratchets up feels like the sun slowly hitting the wall when you’ve given up on the idea of rest. Stripped of the high-profile features found elsewhere on the record, it highlights the core chemistry between Bachmann, Jeremy Wheatley, and Jon Rauhouse, and reminds us why this project needed to be resurrected under this specific name.
The Song
Spotify:
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/song/insomnia/1847912002
The Album
Spotify:
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/swet-deth/1847911951
The Band
https://crookedfingers.bandcamp.com/
Be sure to check out the Audio Toxicity 2026 Bad Music Detox Protocol (AKA a playlist of songs covered so far…)