Scunthorpe-born and raised, now Louisville-based, duo Ruen Brothers aka siblings Henry and Rupert Stansall have announced the release of “Awooo”, their fourth full-length album and second for Yep Roc Records, on 17th October 2025. Self-produced, arranged, mixed, and mastered by Rupert, “Awooo” features Henry’s intimate vocals captured on a vintage ribbon microphone, layered with precisely crafted arrangements that expand from the sparse beginnings of vocals, a three-stringed acoustic guitar, and a 1930s kick drum to sweeping crescendos.
Match strikes become percussion, and sea shanty motifs drift through songs like ‘Sticks & Stones’ and ‘Can You Face the Water?”. ‘Sitting at the Station’, inspired by cold nights waiting on train platforms in northern England, “was written in all of 15 minutes over a phone call, as if it were jotted on a notepad,” Rupert said.
Aesthetically, “Awooo” is inspired by their father’s monochromatic storm etchings from art school, the set of the 1939 film “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, and the atmospheric settings imagined during their songwriting process. Drawing on these influences, the brothers handcrafted a clay mountainscape to photograph for the album’s artwork, attempting to create the world in which the songs live visually.
Written and recorded during a solitary Kentucky winter, the album captures the hush of cold nights and the eerie glow of moonlight, drawing inspiration from Frank Sinatra’s ‘In the Wee Small Hours’ and ‘Only the Lonely’, mid-century americana, and classical compositions. They describe “Awooo” as “not just an album, it’s an experience—a whisper in the dark, a lone howl at the moon, a deep exhalation in the cold of night”. You can find the link to pre-save or pre-order “Awooo” here.
The brothers have put out a first single, ‘Desert Showers’, a melancholic, solitary journey that drifts from lonely days into romanticised dreams. It was inspired by the brothers’ time living and recording in California, and the song captures the joy of the rare rainy days that reminded them of their native Lincolnshire. The songwriting is paired with soundscape-like production that crescendos with whirring, drowning vocals, acoustic arpeggios and cymbal swells that bloom like flowers in the desert. For the lyric video, a miniature was set built from rocks and clay was filmed and animated by Rupert.
