California-based singer/songwriter Matt Costa is celebrating the upcoming release of Santa Rosa Fangs, his fifth full-length album—and first in five years—with the recent premiere of the single “Sharon”. Costa notes that “Sharon” “is the rock song I’ve been dying to write from the start of my career.” Santa Rosa Fangs is due out May 18th via Dangerbird Records

Produced by Peter Matthew Bauer (The Walkmen) and Nick Stumpf (French Kicks), the songs on Santa Rosa Fangs center around a fictional young woman named Sharon, her two brothers Ritchie and Tony, and their story of love, loss and coming of age in California, replete with long distance love affairs and nostalgic romances. Rather than setting out to create a specific narrative, Costa began noticing a theme in the new songs as he wrote them: an unconscious embodiment of the surroundings in which he himself had grown up.

“I’ve interwoven my own stories into a fictional idea of what Santa Rosa Fangs is, from my own time spent living in Northern and Southern California and years driving up and down the coast, seeing the landscape and where life can pull you within one state,” Costa explains. “It’s the characters’ story and my story, too, contemporary but still tortured by the past. It’s a window into a time period but spoken as if it’s the present. The beauty of love and loss doesn’t have a date on it; it’s timeless.”

In the early 2000s Costa was on his way to becoming a professional skateboarder when he was derailed by a serious injury. He changed his focus to his songwriting and an early demo found its way to No Doubt’s Tom Dumont, who ultimately produced Costa’s early recordings. In the time since Costa’s last full-length record he has kept busy by soundtracking the award-winning documentary Orange Sunshine and independently releasing a series of EPs

Matt Costa
Santa Rosa Fangs
Tracklisting

1. I Remember It Well
2. Sharon
3. Grudge
4. Pacific Grove
5. Santa Rosa Fangs
6. Time Tricks
7. Coming Around
8. Ritchie
9. Phosphorescent Letter
10. Windy Smile
11. Real Love
12. I Remember It Well #2

MATT COSTA LIVE

April 15
Newport Beach, CA
KCSN Hornblower Cruise
April 17
Dallas, TX
Dallas Arboretum & Botanical Garden
April 26
Huntington Beach, CA
KROQ Roq the Ocean
May 19
Philadelphia, PA
Boot & Saddle
May 21
Vienna, VA
Jammin’ Java
May 22
Brooklyn, NY
Rough Trade
May 23
Cambridge, MA
The Sinclair
May 25
Toronto, ON
Longboat at Great Hall
May 26
Ann Arbor, MI
The Blind Pig
May 27
Chicago, IL
Schuba’s
May 28
Milwaukee, WI
Shank Hall
May 30
St. Paul, MN
The Turf Club