Written by: Alex Green

Photo by Geoff Tischman

The Hold Steady have surprised their fans with the release of two brand new songs.

“Entitlement Crew” and “A Snake In The Shower” hit the band’s Bandcamp page today, with all proceeds to be donated to the K+L Guardian Foundation.

The K+L Guardian Foundation was founded to benefit the children of  “Jersey” Mike Van Jura, who died unexpectedly five years ago at the age of 36. According to The Hold Steady’s Bandcamp page, “Jersey Mike was the unofficial leader of The Unified Scene.”

On the eve of a string of four straight shows in New York this week at the Brooklyn Bowl, the band wrote of the new material: “We recorded these in Brooklyn just this month. We hope to play them at the shows, so we thought we’d share them in case you want to sing along.”

Although The Hold Steady haven’t put out a new record since 2014’s Teeth Dreams, fans have hoped the Brooklyn Bowl shows are a portent of things to come.

And those hopes may not be in vain because the band went on to write: “We are calling this year ‘Massive Nights’ and we are predicting massive things indeed.”