Tim Heidecker makes music to be understood. While the multi-hyphenate comedian and songwriter was on tour in 2022—his first time performing his own material with a full band every night—he noticed a recurring response to his lyrics among his devoted fanbase. “Especially people my age, maybe a little younger,” he recalls, “They would come up to me and say, ‘That is how I feel. And it’s nice to know you feel that way, too’”

Where his celebrated work in film and television is often an act of complex, surrealist worldbuilding, the increasingly tender and expertly crafted singer-songwriter material that Heidecker releases under his own name is built to encourage these person-to-person connections. After the breakthroughs of 2020’s wistfully lush Fear of Death, made in collaboration with Weyes Blood, and 2022’s High School, whose multidimensional tales of nostalgia were never quite as distant as they seemed, Heidecker has reached a new peak with Slipping Away, his warmest, fullest, and most ambitious record to date.

After working with indie luminaries like Mac DeMarco, Weyes Blood, and Father John Misty, Heidecker is in a rarefied field of artists who refuse to grow complacent, and creative leaps like Slipping Away exemplify his devotion to the craft.