Pet Fox Shares “Avoidant” Ahead of October Album Balance

Boston band Pet Fox released “Avoidant” on September 21 as a new preview of its fourth album, Balance, scheduled for October 23. The song follows the earlier title track and brings a more specific emotional thread into view before the full record arrives.

Singer and guitarist Theo Hartlett has described “Avoidant” as a song about overthinking and the habit of avoiding a difficult conversation for fear of upsetting someone. In that account, silence can make the eventual conflict worse. It is a songwriter’s explanation of the track, not a clinical claim about listeners or relationships.

A different recording process

Balance was recorded over seven days at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville with producer Alex Farrar. The band says the sessions captured the players performing together, with overdubs added selectively. That process marks a change from the group’s earlier, more self-produced work and gives the October album a concrete point of difference.

The release has been described as exploring the tension between caring for oneself and meeting others’ expectations. “Avoidant” offers one example: a familiar social impulse becomes a song about the costs of postponing honest communication. Other songs may approach that theme differently, and the available tracks are only a partial guide to an album that has not yet been released.

Hartlett, bassist Morgan Luzzi and drummer Jesse Weiss have a long musical history together. That matters in a record presented around the energy of a group playing live in the room: the performances can depend as much on their shared timing as on studio polish. Whether the full album sustains that approach is a question for its October release.

For now, “Avoidant” is a distinct new single, while Balance remains scheduled for October 23. Listeners can judge the new track on its own terms without mistaking advance descriptions for a review of the finished record.