Thurston Moore and Bonner Kramer (fka Kramer) are releasing a new album together. They Came Like Swallows – Seven Requiems for the Children of Gaza arrives on May 1 via Silver Current Records. Today, the pair also shared a first song from the album, “Urn Burial,” with a music video. Check that out below.
Although the Sonic Youth frontman and Galaxie 500 producer have been friends for over 40 years, They Came Like Swallows marks their first album-length collaboration. The LP began to take shape over a series of improvisational winter sessions in Miami, including one where Moore and Kramer covered Joy Division’s 1979 track “Insight.”
“What transpired is They Came Like Swallows, a session we immediately felt should exist as a prayer to the war-torn souls of the families of Palestine continually decimated by the brutality of genocide,” Moore shared in a press statement. “We agreed beyond words to offer our music as a sonic activism and as a beneficent energy. This album is our duo exchange for human dignity, it is our soul music for any semblance of a peaceful planet.”
Moore released his most recent album, Flow Critical Lucidity, in 2024. The year before that, he published a memoir, Sonic Life. Kramer released an LP with Pan American, Interior of an Edifice Under the Sea, in 2025.
Read the book review Thurston Moore’s Memoir Gets Lost in a Punk Neverland.
They Came Like Swallows – Seven Requiems for the Children of Gaza:
01 Urn Burial
02 The Redness in the West
03 The Third Migration
04 They Came Like Swallows
05 The Living Theater
06 The Oceans are Crying
07 * Insight
