Stanton shares new single "Everything is Dusty" (for fans of Jim White, Daniel Lanois, Paul Simon & Ry Cooder)

Thirteen years after their debut, Stanton is finally releasing a new album on January 16, 2026. The second single leading up to the album is “Everything Is Dusty”, a track Geert Hellings wrote for his son.

“The song is an ode to imperfection, to the small blemish, the speck of dust in your eye, that one detail that slips beyond your control. Perfection is a fiction. And realizing that is liberating,” Hellings explains.

ABOUT THE UPCOMING ALBUM "I AM LISTENING NOW"

Thirteen years after his self-titled debut, Geert Hellings returns with a new and deeply lived-in Stanton album: "I Am Listening Now", out January 16, 2026. In a time marked by heated politics and a heating planet, Hellings seeks depth and defiance. Gritty rockers stand alongside fragile vignettes, rooted in the finest songwriting traditions.

“With this record, I’m turning a page,” Hellings says. “It takes stock of life as it stands now, after five intense years since Covid. The title track is a mantra and a plea for openness, dialogue, listening. Everyone I love plays on that song: from my children to my in-laws to my closest friends. It’s a gathering, a hymn to love as a way to give meaning to a life in a world that seems to be growing darker.”

Since the 2013 debut, Stanton’s sound has evolved from Americana and Mark Knopfler-inspired guitar work into a more personal, distilled musical language. “The first record clearly sat in an Americana sphere,” Hellings explains. “You can hear the influence of my guitar hero Mark Knopfler all over it. Ten years older, three children later, and with a backpack full of life experience, that naturally leads to new songs.”

The refined arrangements reveal Hellings’ craft as a film composer, while his long-time collaborations with singer-songwriters like Jim White and Guido Belcanto shape the narrative quality of his lyrics. Since the pandemic, the music has taken on new depth: more personal, more text-driven, with fewer guitar solos and more space for sound and atmosphere.

With "I Am Listening Now", Stanton emerges as a band with its own unmistakable voice. The title track closes the album as a hypnotic mantra:

“Oh Love, won’t you teach me how.

Oh Love, won’t you teach me why.

Oh Love, won’t you teach me how.

Oh Love, I am listening now.”