The title track of Dustpiles started with a guitar. He'd used it in one of his early videos, filmed in Eufaula, Oklahoma, and later found it still sitting there under a layer of dust; the song closes the album, and he calls it a darker way of saying how love should be. The 16-track record came out July 17, 2026 on Music Soup/Darkroom Records after a couple of stark acoustic EPs, and it pulls the old material forward too. "Everything Under the Sun," written at 16 and first released in 2023, got re-recorded with full production. NME's review heard a real storyteller, one who says ideas come from Forrest Gump and Dance Moms as often as from his own life, and the George Strait nods are on purpose: "The Dress" grew out of Strait's "The Chair."
Release day went sideways. He was hospitalized in Montana with sepsis on July 17, which wiped out the album release show, a set at Under the Big Sky and what was supposed to be his Grand Ole Opry debut, and he went home to Nashville to keep seeing specialists. By late October he was on the Dustpiles World Tour with a band carrying banjo and pedal steel, opening Boston's Royale with "Pretty Little Liar," trading dance steps with his banjo player, his dad running the merch table, and closing with "Everything Under the Sun." He was 19 when the album came out.