The Jeff Tweedy Twisted Teens cover that landed on 11 September is worth your time: the Wilco frontman has shared a rendition of the New Orleans duo’s ‘Wild Connection’, taken from their February album Blame the Clown, posted to his Substack for anyone who missed it.
Tweedy did not simply knock out a quick recording and move on. He wrote a short essay to go with it, and the honesty in that piece is half the reason to go looking for the post. He praised bandleader Caspian Hollywell’s voice directly, admitting he ‘had trouble not trying to sing like him.’ That kind of candour about the pull another artist’s voice has on you is rarer than it should be.
What Tweedy Said About the Jeff Tweedy Twisted Teens Cover
‘One of the reasons I do so many cover songs is that I think it’s good to hear something you like and then see what it feels like to try it on, almost like clothes,’ Tweedy wrote. ‘On this one, I think I still sound like myself. I actually kind of feel like I maybe sound like a younger version of myself.’
That last line is worth sitting with. A frontman of his vintage finding something in a relatively new band’s catalogue that pulls a younger sound out of him, it says something about what Twisted Teens are doing that a lot of longer-serving acts are not.
It is not the first time Tweedy has used his Substack as a space to work through someone else’s material. Back in February, he posted a cover of Cameron Winter’s ‘Love Takes Miles’ as a Valentine’s Day gift to his wife. The covers, then, are not casual content drops; they seem to carry a personal charge each time.
A Busy Year, and More Coming from Twisted Teens
Tweedy’s own 2026 has been full enough without the Substack output. He wrapped a headlining tour in support of his album Twilight Override, wrote a New York Times crossword puzzle, and performed on Kimmel twice. Fitting a steady run of cover recordings into that schedule suggests these posts matter to him as a practice, not just a promotional tool.
For Twisted Teens, the timing of Tweedy’s attention is well placed. The band are gearing up to release their third album of 2026, The Holy Cross Tigers, on 6 November. The record follows their July LP Florida Water Blues, and will mark the band’s debut on Sub Pop. According to the Levitation store listing, the album runs to 13 tracks. The Sub Pop Megamart has it listed under catalogue number 71755.
Three albums in a single calendar year is a genuinely uncommon pace, and landing the Sub Pop deal as part of that run gives Twisted Teens a platform that should put The Holy Cross Tigers in front of an audience considerably wider than the one that found Blame the Clown in February. That Tweedy is now publicly championing ‘Wild Connection’ only adds to that momentum.
Blame the Clown has already been noted in Pitchfork’s best music of 2026 so far round-up, which suggests the duo’s profile was already rising before the cover dropped. Tweedy’s post accelerates that.
If you want to hear the Jeff Tweedy Twisted Teens cover of ‘Wild Connection’, it is on his Substack now. The Holy Cross Tigers is due on 6 November via Sub Pop.
