Alec Ounsworth and his project, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, has been a distinctive voice in 21st-century indie music. Few have been as consistently eclectic and intimate, while fewer still have remained defiantly independent, rejecting what compromises their artistic vision. This independence characterizes Ounsworth’s oeuvre, especially the lifetime project he initiated sometime in the early 2000s, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, which includes 7 albums under the moniker, alongside work spanning solo piano performances, art, and film.

Burned is the seventh album from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and the first in six years. The album finds Alec Ounsworth writing through a difficult stretch that included the end of a relationship and the loss of his mother, uncle and a close friend. Written shortly after a 2025 tour celebrating the artist’s debut album, with live performance in mind, Burned sees Ounsworth looking at generational trauma and the nature of empathy. The sound, though, stays bright throughout, from the synth surge of lead single “Fever Of The Mind” to the gleaming rocker “Late Wish.” “It was important to me that Burned wasn’t all doom and gloom,” Ounsworth says.