Spirit In The Room releasing 2-song single ft. Keith Morris (listen & watch a video)

For the past decade, Spirit In The Room has been the main musical outlet for Dennis Sanders (who also is/was a member of Wes Borland’s band Black Light Burns), and if you’re unfamiliar, picture Josh Homme fronting Nine Inch Nails and doing Nick Cave covers, and that should give you a pretty good idea of what Spirit In The Room sounds like. SITR is releasing a new two-song single on November 1 (pre-order), featuring the very QOTSA-sounding “But It Do” and the harsher industrial rock of “Sunset Nightmare,” the latter of which features the legendary Keith Morris (Black Flag, Circle Jerks, OFF!, etc).

“But It Do” comes with a video starring Dennis on a beach alongside two clowns, and Dennis explains:

The song has a very funny and scary feel to it. The music and lyrics were written during a really terrible time in my life and yet the song still makes me smile and then cringe and then smile again. It takes this really dark and negative subject matter and turns it into a comedy of sorts. It’s quite pleasant and It will forever remind me of the movie Happiness.

As for the song with Keith Morris, here’s how that came together:

Keith came to one of our shows a few years ago when the project consisted of myself and one other musician for the live shows. We were doing a lot of drum machine/loop based material at the time. And he came up to me after the show and said he really dug it which meant a lot to me. So as the project developed I kept in touch with Keith and once I had the song Sunset Nightmare laid out I decided to hit him up to see if he’d have any interest in screaming his head off on the track. And to my surprise he did! Next thing you know Keith Morris shows up on my doorstep with an sm57 in his back pocket, ready to scream his head off. So that’s what we did. He tracked his vocals in my bathroom in 2 takes. We hung out, talked music and then he rolled out. Simple as that. It was an honor to work with him and it’s an honor to have him on this song.

Along with the new single, SITR is releasing a new line of accompanying dog-themed merch, which will benefit Best Friends Animal Society, and Dennis tells us a bit more about that too:

I got involved with Best Friends Animal Society during Hurricane Harvey after seeing all these family pets abandoned during the storm.
They were putting together rescue crews to ride around on boats, gathering all these animals people were leaving behind. It sincerely broke my heart. My dogs are all rescues and remain priority number 1 to me. They’re incredible beings. I wanted to help, so I put together an EP around that time called “Where The Fun Goes To Die” consisting of a bunch of live tracks and unreleased demos and I donated the proceeds to Best Friends Animal Society in Houston.

And since we’re going to be doing a whole line of Dog themed merchandise next year, we decided to print these Dog Hair Don’t Care shirts up first and donate a portion of the proceeds to Best Friends Animal Society in Los Angeles.

Listen to both songs and watch the “But It Do” video below. If you’re in LA, you can catch SITR live on October 24.