Today, Blue Note Records has announced the July 10th release of FATHERS, the self-titled debut by a collective of producer-musician Kenny Beats, keyboardist Kiefer, bassist CARRTOONS, and drummer Nate Smith.

With the announcement comes lead single "PEARL," a light, breezy samba with vocals from Genevieve Artadi of KNOWER.

It was Smith who first assembled the core trio in 2023 as part of his residency at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Tours of the U.S. and Japan followed where the trio further developed their chemistry as a working group. “We all write, we all play at a high level, and we’re pushing each other to be better,” says CARRTOONS. “So we know going into anything that there’s going to be an inspiration and a push from everybody else, so that hunger that we all have independently becomes this super-being when we get together.” 

FATHERS was produced by Kenny Beats and recorded at his Putnam Hill studio in Los Angeles. “I was 95 percent through building my studio, and I asked Kiefer if he could come by with a band and play some instruments,” Kenny recalls. “We custom-built our recording console and hadn’t heard anything through it yet. So it was meant to be a test day to make sure the studio was up and running. Kiefer happened to be playing shows with Ben and Nate at the time, and in testing out the equipment we recorded these songs in 48 hours. Turns out the board works just fine.”