Crooked Fingers - Swet Deth

Released 27th February 2026

One afternoon, Eric Bachmanns son returned from school with a sheath of pictures hed drawn, all of them macabre. There were crows and sinister figures with scythes and tombstones, he recalls. On one, he had written DETH, SWET DETH, and everything clicked in my head. Swet Deth, Bachmanns first album under his Crooked Fingers moniker after a 15-year hiatus, organized itself around the image: its songs are about death, yes, but theres a sweetness to them, a wry sensibility to his lyrics that comes from having experienced many kinds of death and the life that follows in its wake.

Crooked Fingers is a historically slippery concept no two albums sound alike or feature the same lineup in studio or on tour. Hearing parts in these songs that called for instruments he didnt play or vocals that werent in his register, he found himself expanding the roster of guest musicians further than he had on any a